Little 18
by AliLamba
Summary: Complete, Jate AU / Their breathing came hard.
1. Chapter 1

**LITTLE 18  
****By:** AliLamba  
**Rated:** NC-17  
**Thanks:** AB, who is gloriousness with smutty one-shots…that end up being 30 pages. And to Jacks who's always there.  
**Notes:** This is sort of an exercise in pronoun use. I think you'll have to tell me if I'm successful or not. Don't let it be who you think it will be! Also, I must be trying to prepare myself for season five. What. is. linear story-telling. What. Also, I'm just diving in here, so you know. And it gets confusing! So. Prepare. And try to just go with it. By it I mean the flow. Er. Okay I'm done now.  
**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

* * *

Their breathing came hard.

It emptied their lungs like wet sand; heavy clumps falling and dissolving on each other's shoulders…and necks…and hair. The sound of it clouded their ears.

Slowly they became aware of other things: his hand gripping the soft flesh of her upper thigh, her calf digging into the small of his back. He felt the hem of her skirt testing the strength of his fingers and she heard the soft clinking sounds of his unfastened belt buckle, metal against metal. The way his muscles suddenly felt sore. How painful the handle of the dresser drawer was, jabbing into the bones and muscles just above her ass.

Realization eased away the heady lull, and they found they both had eyes and voices; glances darting at each other quickly and almost awkwardly as they tested their vocal cords with different tones. He had to let her down to the ground, muscles straining to move her weight as slowly and carefully as possible until her feet touched the carpet. He stepped away to let her readjust her skirt and blouse while he rezipped his pants.

There was a smear of lipstick across her cheek. He watched it, while she looked for her dark lace underwear.

* * *

_Two months earlier…_

She twirled the olive branch between her fingers, letting the toothpick spin its oblong fruit fast enough to make an oblong circle. Her martini was almost done, but she didn't have the heart to finish it and find another. A group of investors laughed _en masse_ to her left, and it raised her chin out of her mind's reverie, though she didn't turn to find what was funny. Instead she turned slowly and leaned her back against the tip of the piano, the lack of fabric in her dress allowing her skin to touch the cold veneered wood.

_What a dull, dull party_.

Someone recognized her and engaged her in conversation, and though she smiled and complied with their line of dialogue she imagined it was obvious how little she actually cared.

"Yes," she found herself saying. "I'm so happy with him."

The woman was whisked politely away for a dance and Kate sighed while perusing the room.

Watching the way the hem of her evening gown swished as she walked around the baby grand, Kate carried what was left of her drink towards the pianist. She was hoping to simply have something to stare at that didn't require her well-mannered mask of civility. As she came closer to the pianist she let her hand drag across the glossy black surface of the instrument, seeing the diamond-encrusted ring on her finger catch the light.

_Hey you…little girl_.

The pianist had started singing, and his voice was sort of caressing and strained in the way he treated the lyrics. On the piano he played only a few chords on repeat, allowing himself to sing the melody.

_Will you play with fire it'll feel right…_

_You won't be sad_

_For a long time_

_So_

_Take a boy _

_Who pretends to love you_

_He only wants to _

_See you under him _

_But he won't see the glory in… _

_Beauty's not akin to him… _

_You're just a game to be played…_

_Settle down, take your time, don't be stupid _

_Like your friends _

_Your life begins the moment _

_You're alone in the city chasing dreams _

_Not looking back to the time when you were sorrow _

_And feeling sad _

_In your search for a man like dad_

There was something beautifully entrancing about the slight rasp he used while whispering some of the words. Some he dragged out more forcefully, distorting their meaning. And when a person she hadn't noticed stood and pressed a trumpet to his lips, she wasn't necessarily surprised. It was appropriately used; in a subdued way fitting to the song. Kate stopped listening to the music, instead staring down at her ring finger and turning the wedding band with her thumb. She felt like that one piece of jewelry aged her more than twenty years could. And it made her feel lonely.

"Hey sunshine," a voice whispered huskily, coming close – it was her husband. The tux he was wearing suited him – it always suited him – and Kate realized with dull discomfort that she should be more pleased to see him looking so handsome. "Need a refill?"

Kate looked down at her glass, not knowing when she had finished the rest of her cocktail. "I'm fine," she heard herself replying. She felt him kiss her temple and whisper into her hair as he slowly led her towards the dance floor. "Any chance you'd like to be a little more social?"

Her spine stiffened slightly. "I'm sorry, I didn't know I wasn't keeping up my end of the bargain."

He frowned. "It's not a bargain when you're my wife. I'm just asking you to be an asset in that three thousand dollar dress."

Inside she felt dull and listless, and Kate figured there was no harm in pretending again, for this one night. When her husband directed her arms into a dancing position and then slowly started to sway her, Kate found her plastic smile.

Around her husband's shoulder Kate caught the eye of someone she didn't know. He was leaning against the wall next to the door to the kitchen, alone but for the drink he was nursing in his hand. His frame was tall and dark and handsome. And he was staring at her.

"_Freckles_," her husband ground out under his breath, "Will you _move_ god damnit? You feel like a god damned coin-operated machine."

Kate started with a small jump and looked up at her husband. "Sorry," she whispered.

"Sorry Sawyer."

* * *

"I, uh…I've never done that before," he felt like clarifying. She didn't look up from where she was still scouring the floor, but there was a pregnant moment where she paused, and her gaze slid out of focus for half a second.

He knew instantly that she had (done this before), but strangely it didn't make him feel any more sordid. It didn't make him feel like blaming her. He watched her legs move in her high heels across the carpet until she was at the door. Then he looked up at her face, and confusion and panic spiked through him as she opened it. But the door cracked only a few inches as she peered out, then looked down. She knelt. When she came back in her room there was a maroon scrap of lace clutched in her hand, which he recognized instantly as something he'd pulled off her.

* * *

_Five weeks earlier_…

Different party, same tux. From across the room he watched her as she entertained some of _his_ colleagues. It was strange, how effortlessly she got along with them, when Jack felt like his attempts at camaraderie were a constant form of struggle. Her blonde curly hair shone tonight, in the fancy way she had it knotted together. And the gold colored gown suited her. Jack used his finger to hold a small straw out of the way while he took another sip of his drink. He wasn't sure what kind of alcohol it was.

"She's still as hot as the day you married her," someone said, making themselves known. Jack looked up, but his eyes caught a brunette talking to the chief of medicine's wife across the room. She looked like she had green eyes, and something about her looked familiar. But he didn't stop to stare, instead finding his wife in the throng of other doctors, laughing. He forced a grin and looked at Mark.

"And I suppose I'm still lucky you got food poisoning."

It was supposed to have been Mark's first date with Juliet, but he had been keeled over the toilet all day, so Jack had gone to let the intended girl down gently. Instead they'd ended up in the back of the chemistry lab, under a table with the lights off. It had been his first time.

Mark snorted. "Luckiest bastard in the whole world…" he mused, and after a pause, took another long sip of his drink. Jack spent a long time staring at the glass his friend held, the back of his mind toying with possibilities of ten years ago, what he could be doing presently if things had been only slightly different in so many ways. He decided not to think about it, and instead looked around the room.

His eyes sought out where he'd seen the brunette last, but she was no longer there.

* * *

He was feeling himself growing hard again, as he watched her wiggle her hips to get the panties up her legs. He watched her lean over to start adjusting her stockings, cursing when she noticed a small rip. His fingers had already abandoned his tie by the time she started moving towards the bathroom. He heard the water turn on, and then she splashed some on her face. Sliding his hands into his pockets, his tie forgotten, he started walking towards the open door as he heard the water turn off. The light in the bathroom was harsh, and it made her look pale. Under the make-up he could see the slightly darker shades under her eyes, and all at once she looked so tired to him.

Their eyes connected through the mirror, and she released a tumbled heap of breath into the sink.

"That was. Um." She stopped and started like she didn't know what to say, making him feel awkward. "I liked that."

He leaned against the bathroom doorjamb, his hands in his pockets. She turned and rested herself against the marble counter.

"Liked it as in…it'll happen again?"

* * *

_Three weeks ago…_

"I think I've seen you before."

It was the first time he'd spoken to her. Kate knew it was the first time he'd spoken to her. She glanced at him from the corner of her eye, making him know he was being watched and evaluated. "Oh yeah?"

The way he was staring at her let Kate know he was having trouble placing her face.

After a pause. "Are you a doctor?"

Kate bit her lip and shook her head. Not entirely amused, but willing to play. He was cute. She was sure she'd caught glimpses of him all night, and on more than one occasion found him staring back. They'd been sitting at the bar together for almost three minutes before he found the courage to speak to her, and Kate was starting to feel tingly, on the verge of allowing herself to be flirtatious and have a good time. Sawyer'd been on her case about the last few parties about mingling, anyway. And she was pretty sure that the tall man with the short brown hair and the crisp brown eyes was a doctor.

"A doctor's wife?"

She couldn't contain the indignant snort that left her lips through the matching grin. He was the third from that evening alone to make the assumption. The striking out analogy wasn't lost on her.

"Close," she drawled, and walked off with her glass of champagne. Her hips sashayed a bit in her blue flowing gown. She wanted to leave, but she had nowhere to go, so Kate stepped outside into the cold night air. The balcony was mostly empty, and Kate took a seat at one of the stone benches usually occupied by amorous couples seeking privacy and an excuse to touch each other's thighs. Instead she stretched out on it alone, resting her weight on one hand, letting the coldness of the stone seep into her palm and thighs and ass. With her free hand she sipped her champagne.

Kate wasn't sure how long she sat there. But when Sawyer came looking for her with a frown on his face, casually dropping curse words, she rose dutifully and reentered the party. Her husband was no doctor, but a salesman. He represented a firm who had developed some sort of new line of medical tools and had been trying to broker a deal with the major Los Angeles area hospitals for months now. Kate, his wife for only a slightly longer period, had nothing else to do besides…'help.'

She had no job, no college degree. She'd simply met Sawyer, fallen in love, and agreed to marry him.

But on the first night of their honeymoon, Kate had leapt from slumber because of a dream. In her sleep she had been swathed in black, a veil covering her face, looking down into the limitless vapidity of a grave – Sawyer's grave. Yet she had felt no sadness, nor anger, nor a sense of loss. Instead she felt, in every pore of her being, nothing besides pure and undiluted…relief.

Her mother had told her all new brides had that dream; that she would get over it in time.

But Kate hadn't, and the dream had become so recurring that now she looked upon her husband with such blasé tolerance, seeing nothing but a monotonous string of average days and average nights. It wasn't that she didn't love Sawyer. It was simply hard to be happy when everyday felt like you were living a lie – somehow adapting your 'happily ever after' to the model in which you were cast.

* * *

Her heart started beating faster, and she felt it in her throat. It stifled her breathing. The way he was looking at her stifled her breathing.

"We can't," she said, though she felt like the words needed to be unglued from her throat before they left her lips. Their bodies were frozen, and they both acknowledged that it would only take one encouraging move. They wouldn't look anywhere except each other's eyes, both probing for some sort of signal. His hands slipped upwards, out of his pockets, and in a rush she remembered their feel. Her eyelids fell as her breath left her, and she felt him approach. The moment before he touched her she felt her whole body shudder.

* * *

_One week ago…_

Sunlight roasted the back of his neck, little beads of sweat forming though the air felt cold.

Jack stared down the length of his club at the small, puckered ball on its tee. He tried to jog his memory of all those damned classes he'd taken with Juliet. From behind him he heard her soft giggle, and it felt deeply mocking. Every muscle in Jack's body tightened in retaliation, and gave up a swing. He hit the ball – thankfully – but the white speck disappeared into the sky in the wrong direction.

"Ooo," his wife winced, echoing the sentiments of the others in their foursome. Jack tried to compose his disappointment, but avoided the other's eyes as he returned his club to its bag.

"Hey I know how that is," a Southern voice drawled. Jack looked in the direction of the blonde businessman, and felt annoyed all over again with his presence. "Mind's somewhere else, right?"

Jack shrugged and fell back. His wife easily entered the conversation with an anecdote about their trip a few years ago to Palm Springs. She made the Chief of Medicine laugh. Jack tried to smile agreeably when everyone else looked at him.

They finished the game with Jack trailing five points behind Mr. Ford.

"Don't worry about it partner," he told Jack, slinging an arm around his shoulders. "We all get those off days. You know what you need? You need one of my wife's famous whiskey lemonades."

"Just the whiskey sounds great," Jack tried to agree, walking in a way that would break up their friendly pose.

"Hey! Hun!" Jack looked up, towards where Mr. Ford was shouting. Three women were seated around a table behind the stone railing, wearing pastel sweaters. Jack felt his own wife sidle up to his side, and then her breath on his ear.

"Kill me if I ever look like that, okay?" He knew she was smiling. He knew that she was going to say that. He knew that she was going to step away just as quickly, and when they reached the group of wives she would be pleasant and engaging. Over lunch she would shoot him desperate glances when one of the others said something equally canned.

Jack knew he should chuckle conspiratorially. He knew he should squeeze his wife's hand and kiss her temple, tell her that she was different. The impulse nonexistent, Jack went with the crowd to the occupied table.

"Jack, I don't think you've ever met my wife," Sawyer said a little too loudly. Jack turned to the women. He recognized two of them, but the third was faced away from him.

"This is Kate." Her head of brown curls turned, and Jack knew what she would look like before he saw her green eyes.

"_Jack stop," she breathed. She pulled herself away almost violently. Jack shut his eyes._

She was more beautiful than he remembered. The stretch of her neck, and her sprinkle of soft, soft freckles. Her pale green eyes were looking at him.

"_Kate…" he whispered, his voice a groan._

He was perhaps the most gorgeous man she'd ever seen. And she felt like she recognized him.

"_It's not right." There was a weak strain in her voice, and Jack approached. He stood so every part of his body was inches from her, not touching. Every iota of his essence was enveloped in her senses._

"_It's too late." _

He could tell she remembered him. A small hand came up to her slightly parted lips, as delicious mischief edged around the corners of her eyes.

_Kate looked into his eyes, almost scared, very unsure. Her eyebrows pinched together. _

_And then she gave in again._

"Oh, we've met," she said, her voice soft, and Jack remembered exactly. He grinned.

"Not exactly a doctor's wife," he recited. She smiled broadly, excited that he could recall.

"I wasn't being exactly fair though, was I," she murmured, a wicked humor taking over her gaze. The situation should be awkward, but there was a teasing challenge in her tone. "To be honest, my first guess for _you_ was 'doctor's wife.'"

Jack laughed, suddenly and undeniably amused. Everyone else was awkwardly quiet, staring at them, uncomfortable with the obviousness that Jack and Kate were in a small, exclusive little world. Jack didn't take notice, and took the seat next to Kate.

Lunch passed in a verging-on-flirtatious blur, and he felt as if he barely tasted his own food. She was beautiful, and smart, and funny and clumsy. God, it seemed like Jack laughed half a dozen times in the space of an hour – more than he felt he'd laughed in six months. Kate was like the freshest breath of air he'd ever tasted, and just telling her as much was on the tip of his tongue when it was time to say goodbye.

Sawyer had entered back into the picture, slipping his arm around Kate's waist in a way that was designed to establish ownership. It didn't go unnoticed by either party. Jack felt inexplicably angry and suddenly guilty. He looked at Kate, who was looking away.

"Well…" he tried, coaxing her gaze. He wanted to ask for her phone number, or to ask if he would ever see her again. Kate's eyes were wide, almost inviting him to ask. Juliet came to his shoulder, and Jack felt her hand on the small of his back. He tried to ignore her.

"It was very nice meeting you, Mrs. Ford," Juliet injected, offering a controlled smile.

"You as well, Mrs. Shephard."

And that was it. Sawyer turned his wife and herded her to the valet line, while Juliet tried to capture her husband's attention. She tied her arms loosely around his neck and started kissing his throat, whispering into the underside of his chin.

He didn't hear her. _Please_, he wanted to whisper to Kate's retreating figure. _Don't leave me_.

Jack couldn't understand any of it; why he felt like he was breathing again, or why he wanted to push Juliet off him. But he felt drawn to Kate, and it made his eyes linger on her retreating figure for much longer than they should have. When he was just about to finally look away…she looked back.

* * *

He was kissing her. Of all else she was uncertain. But his lips stained her flesh more than ink ever could; every touch she responded to, silently asking for more. It was heat, luscious heat, and already satisfied.

"Jack…" she whispered. "They'll know…"

* * *

_Five days earlier…_

Jack was wandering down the halls when he heard a soft, metallic laugh. His head jerked up, and he found the sound. It was Kate. His mouth broke out into a grin and he started walking towards her. She had been trying to keep up a façade in front of Sawyer and the chief of pediatrics, and he could tell how uncomfortable she was.

She turned before he could announce he was coming. There was a look in her eyes, of almost warning rather than surprise, and intrinsically Jack turned to Sawyer instead.

"Mr. Ford!" he called, alerting the small group. The salesman instantly flicked his eyes towards Kate, but then engaged Jack with a handshake. After all, he was more interested in having surgery on board than pediatrics, and the hierarchy of his intentions was clear.

"Call me Sawyer," he offered, leaving a gap in the conversation for Jack to relax the same formality. He didn't. There was a moment of awkwardness.

"Well I uh, I assume you remember my wife, Katherine…?"

"Katherine," Jack said, testing the word. He grinned when he decided it didn't suit her.

"You know, I was just thinking about lunch," Sawyer intoned. "Any chance I could treat you boys in return for you showing me where the heck the cafeteria is?"

After they reached the pristine blandness of the communal eating space, Sawyer turned Kate towards a table, leaving her there. Jack realized it was unspoken that Sawyer would get her meal for her. When he and the chief of pediatrics started towards the lunch line, Jack lingered behind.

"You go on ahead, I already ate."

Sawyer obviously wasn't expecting this. In a split second he weighed the option of suggesting a different scenario, but there was no legitimate reason to, so he tried to smile it all off. "Anything I can get you then? A beer?"

"No, I'm fine. Thanks."

They both shuffled off, and Jack took the seat across from Kate. There was a moment where they just smiled at each other. Jack wanted to say something, wanted to tell her it had been awhile though it hadn't, that he'd thought of her though he shouldn't. Or that when he closed his eyes to sleep he imagined her lips.

"Hey," she murmured.

"Hey," Jack returned.

"So uh. What're you doing here?"

Jack's smile faltered. He looked down at his chest, picked up a pinch of his lab coat. He changed his mind from the obvious answer. "Janitor," he joked. "Trying to land a breast exam."

She laughed, to his relief. It was exhilarating making her laugh. Kate launched into a story of when she was working in New York; it started with her on the night shift maid's duty for a big law firm, and ended with her being woken up under a desk at six a.m., wearing a drawn on mustache, a knocked over potted plant in front of her after she'd tried to make herself inconspicuous. It had Jack laughing so hard there were tears in his eyes.

"And then—and then they fired you?"

"No!" Kate squeaked, laughing equally as hard, "No! They fired me, because the guy's mistress thought he was having _another_ one on the side with _me_ – and I was still wearing the mustache!"

Jack threw back his head and laughed, his whole torso shaking.

"What's so funny?"

The chief of pediatrics was suddenly right there, Sawyer just behind him. He was balancing a big tray of food and two beers. Sawyer slid next to his wife, casting a quick glance at Jack.

"Don't tell me my wife's telling stories again, Jack." It didn't go unnoticed that Sawyer was forcing the familiar name upon him, and Jack didn't care.

"She's a pretty good story-teller," he contradicted.

It looked like lunch was going to be a long one, as Sawyer brought up the old fallback of sports as a topic of conversation. They fell into it, but Jack's attention waned on the banter. Kate kept glancing at him from the corner of her eye, and suddenly it seemed like it was all he could think about. All he seemed able to see was the way her blouse opened at the collar, wide enough to invite his gaze. She picked at her lunch, but every time her lips opened, he caught sight of it, reveled in it.

Just as he was starting to feel guilty, Sawyer brought up the Red Sox, an issue Jack couldn't ignore.

Suddenly the chief of pediatrics was stretching uncomfortably, and Sawyer was taking notice. The two other men stood, and Kate followed awkwardly.

"So I've convinced you for drinks at seven, right Jack? Because I've already started telling people you'll be there." Sawyer gave him a huge wink to let him know he was joking. Jack didn't believe he was, but looked to Kate briefly. He tried to ask her silently if she would be there too. How do you say it? How do you tell a woman you're not married to that you want to see them again?

…Damn if he'd thought of Juliet all day. And then it was like two weights settled on the breadth of his shoulders. _Juliet_. This needed to stop.

Jack shrugged as casually as his shoulders would allow, and the other three wandered off.

* * *

His evening rounds didn't take as much time as they should. Every step reminded him of another reason he shouldn't think about a girl with brown hair, green eyes, and freckles. But he wanted to know how many freckles she had, and if he took more than a glance at his fingers he imagined them counting each one. He almost masturbated in his office after his secretary went home.

It was cold when he made the quick trip to a bar a few blocks away. The dimly-lit room was only one in a long string of businessmen hang-outs, where they could all pretend that they were young and relevant again. Jack stood outside the window for what felt a very long time. Juliet was in there, laughing at something Sawyer was saying. Her hair was down – it was never down – and every once in awhile she would find an excuse to touch another man's shoulder.

He didn't want to go in. He didn't feel like he could play the part again. Not tonight. Not when he felt so sordid and guilty.

With a quick turn on his heel, Jack headed towards the end of the block. He turned it, walking blindly, until he reached someplace more suited to his needs – where he could get a beer from tap and wonder if anyone spat in it.

When he opened the door he was ambushed by the sound of a football game and something obnoxious from a juke box. It all paled when he saw her. Of course she would be there too. He didn't even think of turning around and walking out.

"Hey," he said again as he reached her booth. She looked up, shocked out of her train of thought.

"Oh, wow…" she said unconsciously, her eyes wide. A ragged breath left her lungs, and she softened.

"Hey."

Jack slid into the seat across from her. Her legs were in the way, but she didn't move them.

"So I suppose I should report you for skipping class."

She laughed, softly, eagerly comfortable. "Hey, I thought we were in this together. Some Breakfast Club you are."

Jack grinned from ear to ear.

Somehow they talked for almost three hours. There was always a beer in his hand, but he felt like he never finished it. Kate seemed to hold her liquor pretty well. It was the only thing that made him realize how much time had passed.

"How are you not completely incapacitated?" he wondered aloud.

Kate grinned mysteriously. "Bartender," she divulged. "Well, I was a bad bartender. Miami. Two months."

For some reason, Jack loved this information. Everything about her was an amazing wonder, and he was slowly realizing how addicted he was. He wanted to know everything.

"How uh." He'd started asking the question before he realized what it was. It didn't stop him. "How long have you been married?"

She didn't seem to mind. "Seven months," she whispered, and Jack instinctually leaned closer.

"Seven years, for me," he disclosed.

"College?" she guessed.

"Pre-med," he amended.

"Ah," she whispered, looking down into her drink. "For me it was a bar." She looked around and tried to smile ruefully. "Not too unlike this one, actually."

He was looking too deeply into her eyes, and was too amused by their color.

"He actually had his eye on another girl," she explained. "But he tripped on me while carrying drinks over to _her_, and spilled all over my dress. We were both already drunk, so obviously it made sense to go back to my place together and change."

Jack tried to keep the mood light, though what she'd just told him didn't sit well. In fact, a tight seed of unmittigated green rage had turned his gut to stone. "Obviously."

She seemed glad of his effort, and smiled at him. But then her smile slipped from her face, and there was an awkward pause as Jack tried to follow her emotions. "Do you—" she stopped and started. "Do you ever…wonder…what it would be like if things were…different?"

She didn't need to clarify; Jack understood her perfectly. It seemed he was constantly aware of the different threads of time, as if they were all clearly laid out in front of him. Step in this direction for your happy ending…step in the other and anticipate the consequences. Pain was knotting Kate's eyebrows together, and instinctually Jack reached out a hand to cover one of hers.

She gasped at the contact, her eyelids fluttering. Jack felt it too—the sudden release inside of him, like warm water over ice. He hadn't realized how hard it had been to withhold his limbs from feeling her skin before know.

"Jack, no," she whispered, but it wouldn't have mattered. Suddenly Jack was crawling around the table towards her, his hands trying to anchor themselves on her in any way they could. He needed to be closer to her…

_And suddenly_ she felt her blood rising to her throat. _Oh god_, she whispered, when his arms were around her.

He was holding her too tightly for it to be a consoling hug. She could feel the muscles in his neck – they were so tense – as if he was unsure where to put his head.

Her phone rang. It made them both jump.

Kate tried to feel relieved as she fumbled by her feet for her purse. She was so aware that Jack was staring at the top of her head, but her mind was a mess with the feeling of her own breath against his skin, reflecting back against her lips.

"Yes?" she asked, her voice tripping over the word. It was her husband. He was drunk.

"No, I'm all right. I-I'll come and get you." Kate sighed as she hung up, and put the device back on the table.

"I…I have to go."

* * *

"I have to go," she whispered into his hair as they both lay sprawled on the bed, limbs tangled. His head was buried in her neck, his lips trying to mark every stretch of her skin. It felt wonderful.

Jack dotted little kisses down her body. There was one above and below her collar bone, then further until his lips touched the top of her breast. "We both do," he reminded. Instead of slipping away, complying with their concurrence, Jack looked up at her, resting his chin on her sternum. For a moment they just stared et each other, trying to probe for answers so they wouldn't have to voice the questions. _Does this feel wrong to you? …Should it, if it doesn't feel wrong to me?_

"Why did you say that?" he asked, quietly, and it shook off Kate's internal monologue. "Why did you tell me to leave you alone?"

* * *

"I'll go with you," he asserted, slipping backwards from the booth and standing so she could get out past him.

Kate felt like he might say that. She could almost remember someone else saying something similar. It tingled the part of her brain which had been telling her to leave all night, and suddenly Kate felt stiff.

"No," she said, a little more harshly than she should have. She was standing just next to the booth, and there was less than an inch of space between their bodies. She wanted to not look up at him, but her traitorous eyes did anyway. He was trying to only be confused. It made it worse. Somewhere Sawyer was waiting for her, depending on her. And here she was. Again. And it was better this time.

"No Jack," she pleaded, her voice filled with emotion. It came out like a cracked whip. "No, Jack, just. Just please. Please just leave me alone."

He looked like she'd just punched him in the stomach, and it pained her in places it shouldn't. Kate bit her lip and tore from the bar, but her hands were shaking by the time she tried to use her car keys.

* * *

_Six months ago…_

Kate remembered waking up next to Kevin feeling her stomach full of the ocean. No, not the ocean, but the alcohol churned everything else inside her stomach. Remembering what she'd drunk and the little she'd eaten the night before didn't help. She needed to get up, and – naked – she stumbled into the bathroom and caved over the toilet to try to purge everything from her system. There was a mirror by the sink, and she caught a reflection of herself: sitting on the floor next to the toilet, half hugging the porcelain bowl, her face clammy with a sickly shade of sea foam green tinting her sallow cheeks. She looked like a junkie.

Her cell phone rang. Splinters ran up her spine as Kate scrambled off the floor and back into the hotel room, finding her pants and fumbling with the denim pockets (why were there so many) until her fingers grasped the small plastic device.

_Sawyer_.

Kate sucked in a breath to keep from crying, but she had to bite her lip in extra effort. No. Her husband's first business trip away and this is what she'd done with herself. Kevin groaned and rolled over in bed, and Kate didn't breathe for fear of waking him. When the steady hum of his light snoring refilled the room, Kate set about getting herself cleaned up and out of there as soon as possible. In the process she found his police badge, and it made Kate feel like crying. _No_, she kept telling herself. _Never again_.

* * *

Jack's head lifted abruptly from her stomach.

"Someone's coming."

* * *

_Two days earlier._

He could almost feel that she was close. For the past three days, despite every way he'd tried to ignore it, he knew that he would see her soon. She was always in his thoughts. When he showered he remembered the smell of her hair, when he walked he remembered her walk, and when someone laughed…all he could hear was hers. Juliet tended to look at him queerly now, but he couldn't even begin to question it – let alone assuage it.

And then there she was.

He had just rounded the last corner before his office, and she was there in front of his door. Her hands were clasping a cup of coffee, her head caved over it behind a shade of her hair. All her weight was on one leg, as if she was thinking about leaving.

"Kate," Jack murmured. They were alone in the hallway, and she looked up as if burned.

She almost cried his name. Jack's breath caught in his throat as his feet threw him towards her, and he remembered how tortuous it was to lie in bed feeling alone. His arms were around her again before he let himself stop, and momentum tilted her head back. And then he was kissing her. He couldn't even do it softly.

They somehow tumbled into his office, the coffee and the folders Jack had needed left in the hall. They stood in the middle of the room, their arms pulling everything closer, lips refusing to let go. It felt like she was breathing the air into his lungs.

"Kate," he whispered when he wanted to just hold her. "_Kate…Kate…Kate…_"

It felt as though every limb was touching the other's. The mood changed.

"God do I want you," she whispered. Jack felt the rush of blood coarse his system, and his hands pressed her pelvis instinctually into his. Her head fell back on a soft moan.

"You're all I think about," he admitted, his hands tugging the blouse from the top of her skirt with gentle, short touches. She was unraveling, her limbs going limp, but when he touched her flesh she froze like she'd been shocked.

"Jack we can't," she murmured suddenly. His fingers felt brittle, like if he moved them away they would break.

"What?" he asked, his voice hoarse.

"I…I can't do this Jack.

"I don't want to do this.

"It's wrong."


	2. Chapter 2

**LITTLE 18  
****(chapter two)  
****By AliLamba  
****Notes:** I think this chapter is even more confusing than the last. I'm sorry :( For some reason I had a really hard time finding the right path for this fic, and complicating it because the easiest (or most inspiring?) option. Er. OHHH AND IT'S NOT BETA-D so uhhh just you know. Go with it.  
**Dedicated to:** Marie, who's a dirty girl and has birthdays :D Like the one she has had today awhile ago.

* * *

Far away, in that one nondescript café not far out of town, he was staring into his cold, cold coffee cup, his brow furrowed under the strain of so much thought. Doubts and fantasies were warring inside his head, razing and pillaging his ability to think straight.

Suddenly he looked out the window. He couldn't look at the coffee any longer. His mind reassured him of the reality, with his long fingers wrapped around the chipped ceramic mug.

* * *

"I…I can't do this Jack.

"I don't want to do this.

"It's wrong."

_No_, he wanted to protest. _But you are_. The denial folded and blurred instantly into embarrassment, then anger – righteous anger. Why did she get to decide when to stop - why did she get to be more morally upstanding than him? She was _no_ less innocent. Did she even know who he was? He didn't break the rules. Ever.

But they both wanted it—they both were ready to commit. And she was stopping. Now.

God, and who was she anyway? He'd barely known her for more than the sum of a week! Juliet's office was a two minute walk from his. His _wife's_. Another woman was standing in his office, and his arms were still around her waist. He knew she could feel his erection, and it shamed him. He felt ashamed.

Jack bit the side of his tongue as they stepped away from each other. He didn't want to look at her. Not anymore. All this needed to stop, and seeing whatever expression she was giving him would just prolong the feelings.

"Fine," he ground out when the temperature of the room felt like she wanted a cue to leave. "I won't bother you again."

* * *

There was definitely someone on the landing outside their room.

"Did you lock the door?" she asked in a rush, her eyes wide.

Jack looked back at her, equally anxious. He wasn't sure.

* * *

_Five hours earlier…_

He couldn't help but hope to see her. Blindly watching Juliet get ready for the not-so-small dinner party, he couldn't stop the imaginations of Kate preparing in the same way. Would she be applying make-up, and choosing her earrings? Right then, was she twisting in the mirror to make sure her stockings were straight…and that you couldn't see the vestige of her undergarments through her clothing?

Jack drove to the party, allowing his wife to talk to him about whatever was on her mind. The atmosphere went silent after awhile, and a glance to her out of the corner of his eye proved that she had found out he wasn't listening.

The last thing he had said to Kate hung in his mind like a knife's tip against his back. He couldn't decide if he wanted to see her. It felt cliché and too powerful at the same time; heart and brain competing with logic and responsibility.

But of course he didn't have a choice.

She was there. She was always there. When they made eye contact from across the room – Jack barely through the door and Kate huddled in a group of Sawyer's new friends…the look she gave him was so pained and fragile, so filled with longing, that all the walls Jack had been trying to prepare simply dissolved.

The Shephard-Burkes seemed to be the last to arrive. The hospital chief's house was huge, and almost forty people seemed to be crowded into the three spacious rooms that made up the west wing of the first floor. Hired waiters wandered in and out with spots of difficulty. The chief's wife was a good friend of Juliet's, and it wasn't long before she and Jack were entangled in a lively discussion with the host and hostess. He felt Kate's eyes on his back, and had to shake off the feeling that his wife was wearing Kate's perfume.

They met while he was going to refill his drink.

Her opinion had changed. His free hand was hanging at his side, and suddenly her hands were around it, not so subtly pulling him back into the bathroom behind the stairs. As soon as the door was closed she shoved him up against the wood, and then grabbed a fistful of his tie, yanking him down to meet her lips. They scalded him, his eyebrows shooting up in surprise even as his eyes automatically closed. He didn't think, and then he was automatically submitting. He dropped his glass as need started pumping through his veins. His fingers slipped into her hair, cradling the nape of her neck as their lips parted. She thrust her tongue into his mouth, coaxing his own into movement automatically.

Rationalism was clawing at his brain, and he could feel himself pulling back. _Wrong. It's wrong. Remind her that it's wrong…_

He ripped himself back and said her name. "Kate."

"Stop it Jack. Just stop. I'm not going to."

"You were the one who told me this had to, Kate."

She glared at him through her eyelashes, her cheeks flush and lips red. "I don't care anymore. I need to stop thinking about it all."

Jack hung his head and dragged a hand roughly over his closely-cropped hair. "So what—" he hurled, "You just want to do it right here? In the bathroom? You want me to fuck you against the toilet?" His voice was unnecessarily cruel, fueled with frustration piled atop frustration.

She leaned forward, until her whole body was pressed against his. Jack's limbs turned rigid, and he had to swallow hard. Her head was dipped, and she was looking at the floor. But every curve of her body was painfully obvious to him, and the strength of not touching her was making sweat appear at his temples.

"Let's go back to my place," she whispered, in almost a purr. "No one will be there."

Jack felt like his saliva was made of sawdust. He wanted…oh God he wanted… Unconsciously, his head tilted towards her hair, and he took a deep breath of the smell which had been haunting him.

There was a knock at the door right behind Jack's shoulder blades.

"Hey, whoever's in there!" a feminine voice cooed. "Quit fixing your make-up, because dinner's about to start!"

* * *

They sprung from the bed and immediately started to fix their clothes. Frantic fingers were flying over buttons and belts and zippers, trying to force things into normalcy. They didn't have time to look at each other.

They could hear someone twisting the knob of the room next door.

* * *

_Two hours earlier._

Jack settled in just as everyone was finding their place. There was still a hubbub of activity, people searching out their nametags at one of the two large tables set up in the dining room. Before Jack could find his own seat, Juliet grabbed his arm.

"Jack," she whispered frantically. "Sawyer put you next to Kate."

He had turned his head so that she could whisper this in his ear, but as her words made contact he whipped his head around. She had to know.

There was a crimp in her eyebrows, as if she was sad. "Just…don't be too friendly, alright? I know you two seem to be the only ones to get along with each other, but just—" Someone called her name, and Juliet looked away. Sawyer was holding out her chair for her. Juliet's limbs froze for a moment, as if she considered finishing what she wanted to say. After a pause, she headed towards her seat.

The theme was to place you across from your significant other, of course. Jack couldn't decide whether to stand and take out Kate's chair for her, but she slipped in her seat before anyone could notice she was new to the table. Sawyer threw an impatient glance in her direction, which Jack didn't miss.

Dinner was tense. It seemed as if Jack could do nothing to avoid brushing his arm against hers with every other movement. Across from them sat their spouses, barely paying attention to them. Kate occasionally turned to talk with her other neighbor, and Jack tried to engage his as well, desperate not to seem too familiar with the one he was fantasizing about more and more with each progressive course. He wanted her.

Kate's calf touched his shin as the plates were cleared for wine and dessert. Rather than stiffen at the touch, he put immediate force behind it, rubbing his own leg against hers in a careful stroke. He heard her let out a sigh.

The final course passed far too slowly. Jack and Kate took turns moving close and pulling away, becoming increasingly aware of what they were both inviting. It didn't seem to matter.

When the last plates were cleared, everyone spent a good half hour lingering to talk. Then the mistress of the house stood, and invited everyone back towards the sitting rooms for brandy and port. She wagged a threatening finger at everyone, rebuffing anyone who thought they were going home in anything less than an hour.

Kate caught the corner of his eye. He caught his breath. People started standing, finding the people they would have preferred to talk to during dinner and catching up on their hours' remiss. A nurse practitioner he was familiar with took Jack's arm and led him astray, just as Kate managed to slip from the room. He watched her disappear.

Jack made an excuse and followed.

The next room had an open archway to the back stairs and the coat room, and he saw her loitering in that area. When she noticed him, she darted a sure glance upwards. Someone else grabbed Jack's arm, and tried to tell him how lovely both he and his wife looked that night. Jack wasn't tactful in the way he disentangled himself from her, and strode across the room. Kate saw him coming, and started to make her way up the stairs. Jack watched her ass as the fabric pulled against it. He tried to linger in the area of the coat room, feigning that he had forgotten something in one of his pockets. In his mind, he tried to count out the seconds.

At 21 he gave up his task and tried to control his eager limbs into walking, made sure not to mount the stairs two at a time. No one was watching him that he could see. The hostess was trying to start a game in the parlor room, and people were making their slow way towards her.

Kate was waiting for him. She was leaned against the wall at the top of the stairs, hands firmly behind her back. Her hair was down and her eyes were wide, and the minute she recognized him he saw her shudder.

_Oh God Kate_.

…She felt his stare. She felt it become more lurid with every step he took to approach her. A heat blossomed all over her skin. There was nothing rational about anything. There would be no thought involved in this.

There was nothing romantic about the way he pulled her against him. Their movements were fueled with a type of hunger, an aching desire they felt nothing could sate. Jack's lips burned against everything they touched, and his tongue stoked her like fire. He was pushing them down the hallway, trying the doorknobs to find an empty room. They wanted to be alone – they felt like they never were.

Frustration started to mount when Jack seemed distracted by the third knob he tried. Impatience made her grab the sides of his head and throw herself into a kiss. She slid her hand down his chest almost abruptly, then yanked at his belt buckle to drag him into her. A groan bubbled against her lips – his groan – and it coaxed Kate's hand over the hardness she found below. Her hand was shaking as she rubbed him through the layers of fabric, and a spark of pleasure clenched the muscles between her thighs as she felt him growing harder.

Kate felt a little bar of sensitized desire run up and down her body, pausing at her hips to really stroke the sweetness of her need. She let out a low moan as she felt her muscles there reacting, rolling over and over as his hands slid down her back to her ass. She sensed his body lowering, and Kate's eyelids rose the bit to where she could see him. His hands ran down her sides the lower he went, starting under her arms, his thumbs brushing her breasts. His whole hand could grasp her hip, and for a fleeting moment she felt unwomanly.

Then he was hiking up her skirt almost violently, and Kate forgot to think. His fingers were dancing up her inner thigh until the tips brushed her crotch - and Kate's chin tipped up into the air on a slow, released sigh. That felt good. Her hips unconsciously tilted themselves to spread her knees, as his fingers made sweeps across the stretch of lace. She felt her breathing like it was paste stuck to her throat, and then just the tops of his digits were curling around the undergarment, until she could feel his warm fingernails against her sex. He gently pried the crotch of lace to the side, and then he tested her, finding her hot and wet. Kate squirmed against him, not sure if she wanted to stop or try to coax his hand further.

Kate's breath hitched on an exhale, she almost gasped, and then Jack's hands were touching her hips, fingers hooking over the side of her laced panties, yanking them down her legs. The air from his lungs was directly over her small patch of curls, and she felt the groan echoing through her throat.

She felt his lips against her – _there_ – and Kate's head tilted back. Her hand scrambled to find the doorknob, slapped at the wood until she did. Then they were both awkwardly tumbling into the room, and she was on the ground, and Jack was crawling on top of her, kicking the door shut with his foot. His mouth was upon hers, and then their limbs were melting together, clothes tossed aside like rags. Jack's knee was between her thighs until is was flush against her bare sex. Through the carpet she could hear the music from the party below. Jack's mouth grabbed the flesh of her neck and Kate forgot…everything.

Her blouse had come off, and just as she realized it Jack flipped their position. Kate was straddling his lap, her skirt around her hips, and Jack reached up to unhook her bra. Kate slid the lacey garment off, to the floor…and suddenly Jack could see everything in the light of the moon streaming through the windows. She was beautiful.

Everything seemed to slow. Jack kept her eye contact as he sat up, lifting her with him until their chests were touching. Kate had managed to doff his dinner jacket and undo the buttons of his shirt, his long tie loose and flung over one shoulder. Their lips came together again as if practiced and familiar. They were sweet. Jack leaned forward to shift his weight to his legs, and then he was picking them both up as if she was no lighter than paper. His cock, withheld only by his boxers, pushed against her folds, and it stirred a desire so primitive in Kate's system, that a rush of heat flooded her. Jack felt it coursing through her veins, just below her skin, and their kisses grew desperate. Kate's hands clung to his shoulders as Jack threw them against the dresser. Her nails almost pierced his skin at the sudden shock of pain, but her mind wouldn't let her dwell on it. Jack's hand was between their bodies, and suddenly he was just outside of her. Kate tried to hold her breath, but she couldn't. It was all too real.

And then he took her, and she felt a death.

* * *

There was a banging on the door like someone's open hand was slapping it.

"_Kaaate_," a voice slurred, and both Jack and Kate froze, their gazes immediately meeting.

_No._

_Not Sawyer. Not now._

Jack second-guessed his impulses. Then it was too late. Sawyer had found the doorknob, and in the final test of the barrier he twisted it.

The door was unlocked. It flung open.

"_Kate_," Sawyer mumbled. He tripped over the leg he had weight on, as his eyes squinted to make out the room. It was still dark, the moon framed in the window. Jack looked back at Kate, saw her holding her breath as she tried to tiptoe back towards the bathroom. _Good_, he thought. _If it's just me it won't matter_.

They didn't get the chance.

Suddenly bright light was flooding every corner of the room, and when Jack's gaze shot to the door he saw Sawyer with his hand on the light switch. He was still squinting, but this time it was only at Kate. She had her bra and skirt on, but the blouse was un-tucked and only half buttoned. She was holding her shoes in her hand.

"_Whatchu doin' here Kate. _I've been…I've been looking for you. Wanna go," he mumbled, stumbling towards her blindly. He didn't even seem to see Jack…until half-way through the room.

"Sawyer," Kate insisted as she put on her shoes, when his gaze was trained on Jack. "Sawyer, leave it. I'll take you home." But he was slowly putting the pieces together. The unassuming confusion was slowly being replaced by a mounting fury.

"_You bitch!_" he suddenly raged. "_You did it again!_"

Jack sucked in a sharp, painful breath. _You knew_, his conscious mind reminded himself. _You knew that you were not the first_. But it still stung somewhere deep to have it known, and he would be lying to himself if the word 'slut' didn't enter his mind. A glance to Kate proved that there were tears in her eyes. And he understood.

There was something like a string connecting him to Kate; some intangible amount of loyalty which couldn't be severed from the real ties he had to job, life and family. And if he knew it was there, she could only be as aware as him. He trusted this connection implicitly. Though he did not know it yet, in his heart he already loved her more than he would ever love another.

Sawyer was fuming in the middle of the room, his eyes screwed up with fury. Twitches were wracking his body – angry little movements that belied the fact that he didn't know how to proceed. It was obvious he wanted violence, but he was undecided on how best to start the fight. And with whom. He kept darting glances to Jack, his tiny pupils swiveling between his wife and his client. And in a small way, Jack felt bad for him. But Jack's feet were trying to slide back into a defensive posture, subconsciously recalling all the years of college football.

"Sawyer, calm down. We can talk about this."

It was like an ice pick taken to a window pane. Sawyer whirled around, his arms flying as if he held no control of his limbs.

"You shut up Jack-O. You keep the fuck away from _my wife_."

Jack was momentarily stunned, clamping his jaw so he could more easily swallow the '_he's right_' that was his first thought.

"S-Sawyer," Kate tried, her exhales catching on her words, and it sounded like the dry heaves you make after a hard cry. "Sawyer nothing happened."

"_The fuck nothing happened, Kate!_" Sawyer burst, and before Jack could move everything was happening at once. It only took two steps to take Sawyer to Kate, and then he was yanking her towards the door. Kate half-yelped before she managed to swallow it, but her feet were like ice in all they did to help her across the floor.

For the first time in Jack's life, he couldn't think of what to do. Her tortured expression was so potent and real, that for a moment Jack was stunned by the impact. The rational side of his brain was clawing desperately at his conscience, whispering in a seductive, soothing tone…_let her go…let her go…let her go…_

Sawyer wrenched the door open. Kate tripped over her own shoe and her body pitched forward—her hand hit the back of the door with a loud _smack_. She took her hand away, and there was blood.

And suddenly Jack was in motion. Sawyer and Kate were already down the hall at the top of the stairs, but Jack ran after them. Kate's feet had defrosted to the point where they could manage the steps, but her hand was still bleeding, and miniscule flecks of blood were catching on the banister.

"Sawyer stop!" Jack called, too loudly, and were it not for the band playing downstairs he would have been heard.

Kate's head whipped around – they were already down the stairs. "Jack," he saw her breathing, tears welled at her eyes, desperate to stop him. "Jack don't."

But he wouldn't be stopped. Jack leapt down the stairs two at a time, throwing himself around the banister and into the party. People were already gasping, horrified at Sawyer and Kate's flight, but they'd already made a path to follow, too. Now they were making conclusions, shaking their head as Jack tunneled easily between them.

Suddenly they were surrounded. The music had stopped.

Jack came to a startled halt when he realized Sawyer had too. He was panting, his eyes darting over the faces in the room, overwhelmed, out of his depth, not yet letting himself be self-conscious about what was happening.

"_You slept with my wife, hoss!_" Sawyer snarled, and there was a muffled sob next to Sawyer that brought Jack's attention to Kate. She was practically melting with shame, tears running silently down her face, her eyes screwed up to barely a squint in a feeble, childish effort to make them stop. Her shoulders were quivering. The room was deadly silent besides.

Jack hadn't realized he hadn't spoken.

"_And what – you're not even going to defend yourself?_" Sawyer's rage was trespassing beyond his drunkenness. It was plain the argument would shortly turn to blows, that Sawyer was itching to beat Jack's face in.

Jack was speechless. He didn't know what to say. Through his panting he tried to form words, or even thoughts, but all that was coming to him were these feeble attempts to let Kate go, or to have the conversation outside.

But he didn't have to bother. The blind rage was ebbing in Sawyer's eyes, and the faces of others were starting to swim in his vision. Women were covering their open mouths with small, powdered fists, and gentlemen were glaring at him as if annoyed by a stranger's bawling child.

With a strangled roar Sawyer turned on his heel. He shoved someone – hard – out of the way, and tore from the room.

There was a tiny _snap_ as Kate was hurled after him. So tiny only a medical professional would be able to recognize the small fracture of her radius. Perhaps it's what motivated the collective _gasp_ from the room, or perhaps it was the way Dr. Jack Shephard tore after them.

He didn't see the women converge on Juliet, or the way her head was bowed in resignation. He wouldn't be there to see the way she didn't say anything, not a word to answer all their alarming accusations.

All he could see was Kate. The front door was open in front of him, and he hurled himself through it. A shock of freezing cold air met him.

Sawyer and Kate were almost to the front gate at the end of the drive, and he could see Sawyer craning his neck, trying to remember in which direction he was parked. Jack started running, his toes digging into the gravel driveway with as much success as if it was made of wet sand.

"_Sawyer!_" Jack called again, and the fear he had carefully contained released a small leak into his tone.

If he would've been closer the growl that came from Sawyer's throat would have been easier to make out. As it were, all Jack could hear was the wind and blood in his ears.

The gate was thrown open, but it was slowly swinging closed. Jack grabbed it just before it sealed completely, wrenched it open. Adrenaline had found him.

"Sawyer," Jack challenged.

Sawyer thundered an expletive, threw his foot against the middle of the elm-lined street. He couldn't find the car. He stopped, his shoulders rising and falling as he heaved breath in and out. It was a second before he swung around. Beside him, Kate was crying, her fingers tugging uselessly at the hem of her disheveled shirt. It hurt to look at her.

"I'm so glad you are now acquainted with my _slut_ of a wife."

"We didn't want this to happen—"

"_We didn't want this to happen!_" Sawyer mocked, his fingers wagging in limp air-quotes. "Fuck you, doc."

Jack's brow furrowed, suddenly serious. He was torn between provoking him further, punching him as hard as he could, and taking Kate to safety.

"Sawyer—" Jack tried, testing his own emotions by being as calm as he could. "Sawyer we need to talk about this. We do. But right now Kate needs help; she's bleeding and her arm's probably broken—"

It was all the wrong things to say. All of it was wrong. In better light Jack would've seen how red and purple Sawyer's face had become in such a brief amount of time, to see how bugged his blue eyes were. As it was all Jack was privy to was the next guttural scream of rage.

Sawyer hurled himself at Jack, his fist cocked and curled beside his head.

Jack wasn't even proud of how easy it was to duck.

Sawyer tripped and hit the pavement. There was a feeble moment where it seemed as if he could get up again, and Jack readied himself for another assault. Sawyer collapsed in a heap and was out. It was pitiful.

The adrenaline was starting to wire his system painfully, and he realized how much he just wanted to sit down and digest. Barely looking behind himself, Jack collapsed onto the curb, knees up, setting his face in his hands.

What had just happened was catching up with him. He had just run through his boss's house, not even completely clothed, after a similarly undressed woman and her husband. He'd run past his own wife, all of his colleagues…everyone he knew. What was he supposed to say to any of them? _…What was he supposed to say to Juliet?_ He felt suddenly fatalistic, as if his life was descimated. He had nothing to grab hold of that hadn't just been changed completely.

Kate let out a shuddering sigh that wasn't even sad, and a glance to her saw her eyes knitted with the frustrated effort to stop crying. She was trying to be calm, to be rational. Someone needed to be.

…He wasn't sure what to do, or what to say. Shadows were mostly masking his face.

There was a stretched, strained silence. Jack's heavy breathing combined with Kate's desperate attempts to quail her weeping. She held her broken forearm with her bloodied hand, and stepped into the light.

"We need to get him into the car."

Jack was surprised, but after the allowable moment of shock he stepped into motion. Kate was crouched in her heels next to Sawyer's body, and with her working hand she fished inside his pant pocket, after a moment withdrawing Sawyer's keys.

Jack lifted Sawyer as if the man could still wake anytime, taking the man's weight onto one side of his body with the man's deadweight arm across his shoulders. He dragged him a step or two and then had to stop. He couldn't do this alone.

And for a second, or third time, Kate seemed to read his thoughts. Suddenly the weight on Jack's body was somewhat lifted, and a glance beside him saw Kate struggling to heave her husband's free arm over her shoulder.

"It's just…over there," she grunted, taking a cautious, heeled step forward. Renewed motivation had Jack taking more of the weight than before, and over the course of the longest minute in Jack's life, they made their way together to the scarlet convertible half a block away.

Together they hurled Sawyer into the backseat. The man was still breathing, but clearly unconscious.

For another minute they supported their own weights against the car, leaning against the mass of metal to regain their breath. Wild fantasies were spinning in Jack's mind, fantasies where he and Kate could run away together, live on a beach for the rest of their lives, making love and being happy until they died – very old and together.

He was giving her half glances out of the corner of his eye, trying to gauge when he could talk to her, when he could persuade her that this was all a good and necessary thing.

"Kate," he finally said, breathless and intentional. "Kate," he repeated when he could tell she had heard him but still didn't look up.

With effort, Jack shifted his weight, so his side was leaning against the car and he could look at her fully. Breezes were rustling the leaves of the elms overhead and the wisps of her hair he himself had freed earlier, so very long ago. Her eyes were blazing, no more tears, though the freckled skin that stretched her cheeks looked fragile, like pale wet paper in the moonlight.

"Kate, listen to me," he said, trying to get any sort of reaction from her now. "Listen. We could – we could just go. We could leave everything behind, Kate." When had he started pleading? His voice was now taking on a tremulous tone, as if begging her not to hurt him. "We could be together."

"You know _why_ I can't be with you, Jack?" she cried, real agony shredding her words. "Because we won't have a story. We won't have anything to tell our kids, or grandkids, when they ask how we got together. Everything it just going to be stained, because we destroyed the chance that two other people could tell those stories themselves."

It hurt because she was right. The truth was twisting his insides so he wouldn't cry.

"It's not fair," he commiserated. "It's not fair that I can't have what we've had."

He couldn't look at her. He couldn't look anywhere, because standing still for any length of time meant that he would dwell on things forbidden. All the _what could have beens_. God, he was already thinking like that. Like it was over. _It never really began_.

"We're not little anymore, Jack." Kate's whispered voice was surprisingly clear, despite the tears making their way over her beautifully pale cheeks once more. "We're not little, like we were…at eighteen. Real life can't come from whims."

Her voice was soothing, fueled by a rationalism he didn't dare attempt, and it calmed a deeply hidden part of him. His eyes lifted and found her gaze. She was so beautiful. Even now, when his heart felt like it was breaking, she was beautiful. _It never really began_.

* * *

Her last words turned over and over in his head over for the following few days, few weeks, few months.

His life was passing him by in one dull, gray blur. After walking home from the party, a feat that took him until the sun had just crested the horizon, his shoes ruined and sweat pouring down his back, Juliet was already gone.

Her ring was sitting on a shelf, half-hidden by books, completely mistakable were it not for the early rays of sunlight caught the gleaming metal and gems. There was no note, nothing missing. She would never come back for her things.

She quit her job and moved, some place, some place rumored to be Oregon or at least up north, though no one told his to Jack. In shame and helplessness he kept his old job, mechanically going through his motions, keeping his head down when he walked through the hallways so as to avoid the eyes that followed him everywhere.

He was perhaps, ironically, even better at his job than he was before. Decisions were made immediately, no hesitation, with the cold finality of removing one's emotions. Things were happening. His life was happening. He took his wedding ring off for surgery once and forgot to put it back on. It stayed on a shelf in the washroom until someone threw it away with a handful of paper towels.

He stayed late, and arrived early, sometimes staying away from his apartment for days at a time. No one called him except about work, and Jack hardly dared to believe he deserved any better.

* * *

Jack couldn't be reading the clock right. With a frustrated frown, he shook his head, knowing that Juliet would be upset that he wasn't home when he said he would be. Mr. Johnson's surgery had encountered a few unprecedented complications, and the fact the man was still alive was in most part a miracle. He frowned again and turned back to the task of dropping his used scrubs into the laundry bin. _Juliet doesn't live at home anymore_. He must be more tired than he thought.

"Dr. Shephard?"

The voice seemed to come out of nowhere, and it felt like slow-motion, the way he responded unfocusedly to the request of his attention.

He could definitely recognize her as one of the younger nurses, though her I.D. badge helped. He remembered she was usually in the E.R. He didn't really stop to questiont he fact that she was standing at locker room door.

"Yes?"

She looked a little frustrated, mostly nervous. "She wouldn't listen to me, sir. I told her to wait for you in the E.R., but she ran off."

Jack blinked rapidly, trying to clear his head as he held out a hand to calm her. "Wait, what? Who? Who's looking for me?"

The nurse's voice was deceptively timid. "She said her name was Kate, sir."

The unexpected weight of this information made him lean back onto his heels, as he searched the air above the nurse's head while his mind processed the information. It took no more than a few seconds to put together where she had gone. In a bought of thoughtfulness he remembered the messenger in front of him still. "Thanks," he tried, already turned to leave, his brows furrowed in concern and confusion. "Thanks Cindy."

What was she doing here? Why didn't she call? Did she go to his house first? Did Sawyer know?

The door to his office was already cracked open. The lights were off. Not knowing what to expect, Jack flipped the lights on.

Kate was sitting in the chair behind his desk, her head in her hands and her shoulders shaking. "Turn it off!" she suddenly screamed, and Jack felt panic infect his blood.

"Okay, okay," he calmed, his voice a little higher than usual in his alarm and anxiety. He held a hand in front of him, as if trying to pacify her with his open palm, while he other hand searched again at the wall for the switch. With a small _click_ the room was once again shrouded in darkness.

Kate's heavy sniffs were echoing around the room, and it felt so strange to have no control over your own body. …Though every piece of him felt frozen, he made careful steps forward, each one measured and slow, as he tested how close he could get to her.

She was still sobbing into her hands, but when she heard his footfalls mere feet away, she gasped and looked up.

And with her face illuminated by the synthetic light coming through the windows, Jack felt his insides fill with ice.

Her lip was split, and there was a bloom of purple blood beneath her skin under her left eye, somewhat yellowed, as if it were days old. There was a trio of scratches on her cheekbone.

"I'm so sorry Jack," she sobbed, her voice bubbling as it wetly left her throat. She meant it, and he didn't know why. "I'm so sorry."

Jack tried to shush her, felt himself crumpling around her as his hands lifted her face. His astute eyes pored over every detail, as he gingerly pushed her hair aside to see things better. There was a gash behind her right ear which had matted her hair with blood. Smeared, dry blood around the area showed that she had tried to staunch the bleeding herself.

Jack resettled his weight and tilted Kate's head to the side, perhaps a bit more roughly than he meant to. He spread the hair away from the cut and tried to assess how deep it was. He needed more light. The lamp on his desk worked fine. She would need sutures.

Quick, necessary steps took him to the medical cabinet at the side of his office, where he assembled a simple tray. He chose a nylon thread. Standard black. He gloved his hands. When he returned to her he barely saw that she was no longer crying, or that her face was screwed up and pale. Her head remained in the same tilted position Jack had left it, and quickly he began his work. With a syringe far too long he numbed the area, then used his prongs to work the nylon-threaded needle through her skin.

She barely whimpered. After eight minutes quick work, Jack cut the remaining thread and gave a final sterilization to the wound. There would perhaps always be a scar.

Jack leaned back, indicating the finality of his work. He disposed of the used materials in the appropriate receptacles, and left his tray by the sink. When he turned back towards her Kate was gingerly touching the wound. Her eyes started to water again, and she pursed her lips tightly, setting her hand on her knee with the other and looking Jack squarely in the face.

"He did this to you," Jack asserted, as fact, no question of hesitation in his voice.

Kate said nothing, but her eyes screwed up tighter as she more carefully fought her tears.

Rage, undiluted rage billowed up Jack's throat. He only wished Sawyer was in the room so he could pound his face in, so he could exert all his pent up emotions onto a body that deserved it, feeling the man's bones crack under his wrath and knowing that he would not be the one to fix him.

Instead he used his hands to manage his own body, one fist anchored on his waist and the other grabbing the short, cropped hair at the top of his head.

_This is your fault_, his subconscious whispered to him. _You should have saved her when you had the chance._

He wanted to say so many things to her. He wanted to convince her to come with him this time. He could tell her about the beach again, about how happy they could be. He could tell her that Juliet left him, that he was free, that they were free, that they had a choice.

He could tell her that every night he dreamed of her. That when he kept his head down while walking through the hallways it was so he could languish in the memory of her. That only by keeping the memory of her, the insane hope that he would see her again and fix things, could he survive.

She was the only reason he could tolerate the stares, the whispering, the disapproval of his peers. The fact that he was being consciously ignored at work and utterly alone at home should have been soul crushing, if not for the fact that he had once seen her smile.

Kate's trembling feet were lifting her out of Jack's chair, and she stumbled over her own weight as she crossed the linoleum floor.

Her split upper lip was trying to catch her lower one, and tears were silently coursing down her face again with each step she took closer to him. He was trying not to look at her, to ignore that she was reaching out to him, instead trying to hold on to his rage, to plan the vengeance he did not deserve to carry out.

"Jack," she tried to murmur, but when her mouth opened and the tears and saliva met the word left in a garbled tangle of sound. She lifted her hands higher in front of her, and then her cool fingers were sliding over either side of his neck, and then they were sliding into his hair, and the palms of her hands were adjusting his head so that he would look at her, and his eyes were full of barely-concealed longing.

And with barely another thought, she kissed him. She kissed him until she'd convinced him to kiss her back, and when her tiptoes failed her and she started to fall he put his arm around her waist and held her against him, so that she was in fact closer to him, and he could sweep his tongue inside her mouth and taste the blood from her lip and the tears from her eyes and feel every soft, bruised pound of her flesh flush against his hard body so marvelously. And when her jean-clad thigh slid higher, and she twisted her leg around his, and their sexes were as flush together as their heaving chests and tangled mouths, he knew what would happen next.

Jack lifted her whole body against him, cradled her ass in his hands so her face would be above his and she would have to lean down to kiss him, and he carried her to his desk and set her on the edge of it. The little lamp amid his pens and papers cast a rosy glow upon her skin, and the mottled colors of her skin all faded into lush, perfect satin. Kate's thin hand slid down his chest when her seated position allowed a gap between them, and through his slacks she caressed his growing erection. Jack supported her back with one arm around it, his free hand gliding from her neck, to underneath her chin, down her body and over her breast. His palm was rough in the way he tried to feel everything, and after barely allowing himself to cup her fullness he was pressing down her side, feeling the inside of her thigh and then as far down her leg as he could reach.

He barely had to rest his open hand against her crotch to feel the heat radiating from her, and sticky fingers shook as he undid the button and fly of her jeans.

Kate's kisses were now interrupted by heavy panting, wet breaths falling on his lips as he tried to work. He stepped backwards so he could rip the jeans down her legs, and she tried to help him by kicking off her shoes and using her big toes to take off her socks.

…She needed to feel his skin. All of it. And so she ripped off his lab coat in a harsh memory of doing it before, and her fingers flew over the buttons from the top of his shirt as his own hands flew over the buttons from the bottom. The shirt floated to the floor and Kate arched her chest to his, feeling through her own t-shirt the heat of his flesh, the wild beating of his heart, and the comfort she had missed so much.

Jack's thumbs hooked under the sides of Kate's shirt, and then he was hiking it over her head, so she lifted her arms into the air and twisted so it would be gone. He unclasped her bra and it fell to the side, and then his hands were back over her torso, feeling the softness of her breasts and the firmness of her stomach, the tenderness of the bruises left by the man who wasn't him.

His hardness and readiness was trying to clamor for his attention, and while he could ignore it it seemed that Kate could not, and within moments his pants were open and he could feel her hands on his shaft. She stroked him with warm, trembling fingers, then cupped her palm around him and gave small, warm jerks. He felt his body's response immediately, and his lips left hers to release the desperate hiss.

He heard her giggle.

The blissful memory of her laugh made him smile, and he had to bite down on the flesh of her neck lest he be distracted by happiness. Instead he rolled his free hand over the inside of her thigh, getting closer to the folds that were heating his hands. The side of his pinky brushed against her hair – _there_ – and she gasped, her spine straightening, the split second before he slipped a finger inside her.

…Kate's spine melted, and she released a low, whispered groan. Jack slid his finger in and out, gliding easily on her wetness, his tongue and lips rolling over her neck as he felt her muscles there twist together. She had the consciousness of thought to once again palm his shaft, and suddenly his slow strokes were moving in concert with hers, and they both had to close their eyes to the pleasure of it all. Jack could feel himself approaching too quickly, knew that however long it had been had been was too long, and quickly he made himself stop, and grab the hand that was covering his cock. He was trying to tell her to stop, but instead she just brought his hand along with her, and they stroked him together.

That was too much. He squeezed her hand and it was a mistake, and took several long seconds to rectify. As he worked to slow himself down, he hooked his thumb over the crotch in her underwear once again, pulling it aside, and then drifted his pelvis closer to hers. He opened his eyes so he could look at her, and found she was already looking at him. The head of his erection brushed against her folds, and he could both see and feel the shudder that rippled through her. Once again her fingers found him, and this time she was guiding him inside, readjusting her hips so he could penetrate her easily.

Her slickness meant he could move slowly, carefully filling her as she released her long sigh. When he could move no more, when she was completely full of him, she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around his bare shoulders. The side of her head fell against his neck, and he buried his nose in her hair, moving his arms so he could cup her around him. There was a silent moment as the held that position, not moving, merely holding and being so intimate.

But her muscles were working against him, and the impulses to move where far too loud. Cradling her body he inched his hips backward, until the lack of warmth was too much, and then carefully pushed back inside. Again, and again, trying to move slowly, getting no reaction from Kate and the face she had against his neck other than the clenching of muscles against his shaft. When her skin began to hum, when her mouth fell open against his flesh, he had to increase his pace. Slow slides turned to pounding drives, and without trying she was practically bouncing, so that by cradling her ass he was in fact lifting her on and off his cock, and the legs Kate had wrapped around his torso started to tighten and her breath became so wet that he knew she was perhaps closer than he was, and instincts were covering rationalism and he couldn't believe how hard he was working for their release—

And then it came, almost by accident, when she tightened completely against him, and the name that spilled from her lips was more like a shocked gasp then a pleasured moan, and the word "Jack" was rattling around in his brain and fuck he probably loved her—

His long, piteous moan that spelled his release brought them both back on his chair, where Kate worked her body so that she could stay curled around around him and try to keep them connected.

Jack's pants were barely recognizable scraps of fabric around his legs, and the leather of his chair was barely soothing over the sheen of sweat that coated his back. Kate's small kisses were all he could feel, planted along the upper right quadrant of his body; his shoulder, neck and chin all felt her caress.

"Come with me," he whispered again, his voice hoarse as his throat was sticky.


	3. Chapter 3

**LITTLE 18  
****By AliLamba  
****Rated:** NC-17  
**Notes: **Um. Head's up. This chapter's weird? I don't know I'm weird and weird things get me going. LOL OKAY SO NOT FUNNY AND TMI, Ali. I meant writing-wise! lol no I didn't. ;-D Enjoy!

* * *

Jack continued to thumb the side of his coffee cup, then checked his watch for the twenty-eighth time.

She was late.

He wasn't expecting her to show, anyway.

The paperwork was almost finalized, expected to be sent in the next week or so. They weren't demanding much of each other. Neither had wanted the apartment, and neither wanted much of their combined assets. Their divorce had been surprisingly simple – as if they'd had nothing of worth in their marriage anyway.

* * *

"Come with me."

There was the slightest of hesitation in Kate's affections. Her lips paused on their way to his collar bone, that barest of stutters as what he said sunk in.

Had she been meaning to do this all along? Is that why she went to him?

No. She went to him because she knew she couldn't avoid him any longer. She knew that eventually their paths would collide again, and no amount of precautions Kate could make would prevent it. That night, with Sawyer, with Sawyer shoving her out of the way and with the counter right behind her head…

Kate winced in memory, though no pain remained. Her fingers instinctually reached up to curl in her hair, inches from the cut Jack had sewn.

Kate opened her eyes, all the way. No. No – she hadn't meant to sleep with Jack tonight. She hadn't meant for any of this to happen. She was trying to be good!

Part of her emotions tapped into the misery of her guilt. Every inch of her skin felt dirty. Disgust started bleeding and writhing within her, and she pulled away the barest amount that would part them.

"Jack—" she whispered, needing to explain. "Jack, we can't—"

He tried to kiss her again. His lips found hers and tried to make her follow him, but Kate was resisting; she wasn't kissing back. He tried again, and again she wouldn't let him sweep her under.

"Kate," he blurted, when he'd finally given up and was resting their foreheads together. Anguish lay barely dormant in his voice, pure desperation.

In a fit of clarity he tried to make her see. "I need you, Kate."

She sucked in a rattling breath. What he said was an echo of her heart's desire, and she recognized it even though her conscience had blocked the emotion. She needed him, too.

Staring into his face, feeling the tears sting the corners of her eyes, and as every part of her face was already seared raw with the extinguished effort of crying, Kate tried to be brave.

"I have to go," she announced, and the shock and pain that split Jack's face was enough to break her heart.

She stood up to leave. She grabbed her jeans and her t-shirt and walked to the far side of the room to put them back on.

She couldn't stop him from starting at her. His eyes were round and full of her as he blindly stood and buckled his pants.

"You…you can't go," he finally said. The man was drowning on dry land. Her heart constricted.

Kate hid her face, tilting her head down so that her hair shielded her expression. "Jack, I have to." What she meant was bubbling up her throat, was clogging her airways. She needed to say it, needed him to know, but knew it only left her vulnerable—"You don't deserve me."

Self-loathing propelled her from the room before she would let Jack try to stop her flight.

* * *

A bell chimed. He absently thought how silly it was, that bells only seem to exist these days to alert for patrons in coffee shops. Jack craned his neck towards the sound.

And he couldn't help it. He smiled.

He saw her weaving her way inside, through the mass of people, before pausing briefly and looking around.

Her big eyes found him. Jack barely knew how long it took her to settle in the seat opposite him.

Though he knew his mouth was working, it was still hard to voice the words around his smile.

"You came."

* * *

He didn't have her number.

He couldn't believe he didn't have her number.

Breaks at work were now spent poring over the phone book or on the internet, going down the long list of Austens and Fords featured in the greater Los Angeles area. After a failed surgery one afternoon, and a failed attempt to reach Kate immediately after, Jack ran his pen so furiously into the yellow stack of pages that he tore half the book apart.

Jack leaned back roughly in his chair, and it threw him backwards an extra few inches he hadn't intended. His hand roughly grabbed the lower half of his face, his finger tips rubbing his lips and the stubble on his cheek and jaw.

Because he knew someone who had her address.

Juliet went over there for dinner once, a meal Jack had missed because of a surgery that had run over. It had been before he'd really met her, when he'd only known Kate as a vague name of a wife to a person in the room.

It was obvious what was stopping him. He felt the overwhelming humiliation every time he reached for the phone, bleeding and twisting and tangling with the shame, feeling the crushing weight literally sagging his body towards the ground.

It was tearing him apart.

Jack's face suddenly came apart, his mouth opening as his eyes screwed up and he started to cry in the insurmountable frustration. He just…needed…to see her. He needed more of an explanation – no – he needed to change Kate's mind. Though he would never come to this conclusion himself, his life would always depend on her.

* * *

"You came."

She wasn't smiling, her face a careful mask of indifference. She was wearing a plain, camel-colored coat, freshly pressed or perhaps newly owned. And suddenly he remembered his ex-wife as the slightly frazzled, haphazard dresser, whose sister bought her all the right clothes but who barely thought to put them together. Juliet took the seat opposite him.

Her big eyes were trained on him, drinking in every expression that flitted across Jack's features. He knew that he was having trouble maintaining his composure, as their unimpressive conversation was surely rattling towards the conclusion that frightened him and filled his heart with hope.

Would it help her to know the why? Or would it hurt her to know how deeply his desperation ran? His heart stopped. Did she know why he'd asked her here? Was she already destroyed?

"Juliet—" he tried to start, but was immediately crushed by the realization that it had been so long since he'd said her name out loud. The familiarity of the syllables triggered something awful inside him.

"Juliet I asked you here, today, because I need a favor." His eyes were clouded with tears. His voice was choked and useless. The bright blue paper cup felt weak and insubstantial in his hands.

"It's…it's Kate."

The reaction was instant and subtle. Juliet gasped quietly and looked into her lap, closing her eyes before her brows could quickly crease. He kept watching her in some sadistic way. She shook her head, just one shake, and looked up at him. Her mask had broken, and now she looked so sad.

"What?" she whispered, breathless.

"Her—her address. I, I need it Juliet."

This all sounded so wrong to his ears. Juliet's expression was pulling into confusion, to bewilderment, her brain working out the pieces. It clicked. Oh…

"Oh," she whispered, for all intents broken. "Oh," she whispered again, and looked out the window.

"Jack how could you ask me for that," she finished, after a strained and awkward silence, where the rumbles and conversations of the people around them filled the gap between them and became suddenly more pronounced.

"If you had any idea—" Jack tried to say, but his voice broke in the middle and he had to regain his composure. "Juliet. You have no idea how much it hurts to have to ask you this. But I do." It was no surprise his voice was now pleading. "Juliet I need it."

"Why couldn't you need me?" she suddenly hurled, the scratchiness of the sounds betraying her deeper anguish. She had let more slip than she'd meant to, had revealed more of the emotions she'd been trying to hide.

Jack was suddenly aware that this was completely the wrong setting to have this conversation. "I'm sorry I brought you here," was all he could think to say. And then he knew he needed to apologize for more.

"I'm so, so sorry Juliet."

It should have made everything better. It should have calmed her, made things hurt less. But tears were rushing to Juliet's eyes and she was trying to cover her twisted mouth with her hand. And then suddenly she was rushing away from him, she was fleeing the café, and he knew he'd never get what he'd asked for.

* * *

It was late.

Jack was sitting in his office chair, not knowing how long he'd been sitting there. Not known how long it had been since he'd slept. The lights were off in his office besides the little lamp on his desk, his legs were spread wide with lack of effort. He was cradling his eyes and forehead in one of his hands, trying to block out the world, trying to change the images flashing through his mind's eye.

His life was turning into a slow, slow torture.

Kate.

Was all he could think about. He was thinking about her now. In his mind he saw his own hands in front of her body, could see the contrast of his skin against hers. While she was milk he was sand, and he both dreaded and needed to mix the two.

Touching her should be like fire to ice, but it was like dipping his hands into warm water. He was afraid his palms would be clammy but they weren't, and his digits slid over her curves like silk on silk. Her torso twisted and turned beneath his touch, and she arched towards him, inviting his mouth to touch her as well. He complied gratefully, his dry lips softly sucking on little patches with perfect tastes. He didn't realize he was moving down her body instead of up, until he reached her navel. It inspired him to dip lower, to continue until his nose and lips were getting caught in the tight, curly hairs he loved.

Her whole body gave a tiny spasm, a twitch to betray that she knew what was coming, to let him know she was gloriously anticipating it.

His tongue slipped inside her folds, her hips held easily by his hands and arms. She gave another spasm, and his tongue tasted sweetness.

He let out a groan, a wonderful groan, for this taste was wonderfully surreal. He probed her deeper, looking for more of that taste, his tongue working around her clit as he placed little kisses against her bare sex. His mouth was almost full of her now, and God how he wished he could identify the taste. It was just pure…sex. This taste was having sex with Kate.

Suddenly she was gone. Kate's chest was heaving, and she had ripped herself away from him, one hand covering her sex from him and the other hanging limp and useless to her side. Through her fingers he could see the flow of liquid he loved, and he tried to crawl closer to her again, tried to slip his tongue past her fingers to get more of her taste, wondering if she was self-conscious and he was assuring her, or if he had been doing it wrong or not enough—

"Jack…" she whispered, and he could hear the laughing in her voice. He looked up at her smile, and changed directions, instead crawling up her body and wiping his face with his hand. She kissed him willingly, almost spent, inclined to indulge whatever Jack wanted to do next. He felt his erection against her skin, so he angled himself to take her. She moaned when she felt his intention, and he felt her beating heart beat faster, and it made his cock twitch in his hand. He slid inside her as her thighs parted, locking instead around his waist so that her heels could slide up and down his spine—

The computer sounded with an unhealthy chime.

Jack was thrust back into his office, the shelves filled with books, the degrees framed on the wall, and the cabinets full of supplies. He was breathing hard, his eyes bleary with delirium, and he was almost surprised to see his erection in his hand. The memory of his and Kate's second coupling – in that bedroom – so long ago – was still scattered through his consciousness.

_Argh!_ he didn't realize he voiced aloud, slamming a fist onto the arm of his chair in pure anger.

What was wrong with him? He gripped the sides of his head and tried to rip at the small strands f his hair. Furious with himself he stuffed his cock back in his pants and used his free hand to check the computer. It was uncomfortable and his pants felt tight, but he deserved the pain, however mild it was. He deserved everything.

It was an email.

From Juliet.

He now knew where she lived.

* * *

Jack had been avoiding the clock on his dashboard for the better part of 20 miles, but now as he rounded the suburban corner the glowing blue numbers caught his eye. It was just past one in the morning.

_This is crazy, this is crazy, this is crazy,_ he kept whispering to himself, as his subconscious begged him to turn around, come back later, come back anytime later. He was such a fool. Such a glorious fool.

Jack pulled to a stop in front of her address. The street was dark except for the moon above, as everyone was asleep. The windows in Kate's house were on.

_Now what_, the thought finally occurred to him, and he ran a shaking hand through his hair. If he thought about this too much he would leave within the minute, so instead he threw open his door and stood from the car. He buttoned his blazer over his abdomen for something to do with his hands, and then walked toward Kate's house. Making a quick decision, Jack walked toward the illuminated window instead of the front door. It wasn't difficult to peer in.

Kate was in the kitchen, wearing a button-down shirt and underwear. She was doing dishes by hand, slowly sponging and rinsing each plate as if lost in thought, or trying to prolong the exercise. There was a bruise as big as a frying pan on her exposed upper thigh.

And suddenly she looked up and saw him. He barely had time to see her gasp.

Even Jack could hear the crash of the plate as it shattered.

This was a mistake.

Kate was jogging on tiptoe towards the door, and Jack anticipated seeing her by smoothing his jacket down his chest. She was suddenly in front of him, eyes wide.

"Jack, what're you _doing_ here?"

He took a stop closer to her, onto the porch. Kate stood in front of the open front door. She wrapped her arms around herself and Jack knew the night was cold.

"Kate I had to see you. We need to talk."

She was shaking her head, not with dismissal, but with fear. "No, Jack. Not here. Not now. _What were you thinking?_"

_I wasn't_, is all his mind could come up with. Jack wisely didn't voice his thoughts out loud.

"Please, Kate," he begged, taking a step closer. Her eyes lit up with sadness and deep-seeded longing.

"He's here, Jack…" she whispered, and suddenly, he was. Sawyer was in the doorway, clad only in boxers, sleepy confusion turning to anger.

"Fuckin' A, Jack, you just can't leave my wife alone!"

"Sawyer, I'm here to see Kate. I really need to talk to her."

Sawyer took a territorial step between them, his bare chest inches from Jack's. Jack's jaw clenched, nerves spiked through his body, but he didn't back down.

Jack looked past Sawyer's shoulder and saw Kate shrinking.

"Kate," he pleaded, "please, just come with me. Just come with me for little while."

Sawyer's shove shouldn't have come as such a surprise. Jack caught his weight on his second step backward, his arms out to his sides.

"_That's enough!_" Sawyer bellowed, and before Jack had the time to recuperate, Sawyer's weight was crushing through his abdomen, sending him to the ground. Jack responded on instinct, and suddenly all his fury and frustration swept through him. Sawyer was trying to pin him to the ground, but Jack had a free arm to throw a well-aimed punch at his jaw. There was a _crack_ as Sawyer's head whipped around, and then the blonde's muted scream of rage, before they were tumbling toward the street, arms rippling, elbows and knees seeking purchase.

Jack felt tiny arms scrambling at his neck, and he threw them off.

He heard her tiny "_Ah!_"

And Jack turned to stone. He tried to pry Sawyer off of him, but the man just wouldn't quit. Jack had the upper hand, and he piled all his weight into his fist, and sent two hits at Sawyer's gut in quick succession. The man groaned and went limp. Curling around himself, Sawyer moaned on the lawn.

"Kate," Jack pleaded again, feeling like a man close to death as he crawled to a standing position and took three shaky steps toward her. Kate almost screamed and threw her hands up to shield herself. From him.

"Jack, don't!"

He didn't know what to do. He sunk onto the ground in front of her. A dog barked from somewhere on the block. A light turned on in the neighbor's house.

"Jack, just – just go. Just leave me alone!" He shook his head, fighting back the agony. This was such a huge mistake.

And he saw it all from her perspective: he was the interloper, interfering with and ruining her life. She was trying to piece it together and he kept tearing it apart. This wasn't just about him, and she was trying – she'd been trying so hard – to make her decision known to him. And he just wouldn't listen.

While his heart was breaking, Jack lumbered to his feet.

"I'll help you get him inside."

* * *

By the time Jack was getting into his car, there were a few lights on down the once-sleepy road, and a few people standing on porches to figure out what all the fuss was about.

He sat at the wheel for a long minute, staring at Kate's face. She stood at her window, looking sadly at him through the glass, and he couldn't find the strength to leave. He couldn't say goodbye.

She lifted her hand, and placed her palm against the window. And that was Jack's undoing.

* * *

**Notes:** Yes okay just one more chapter. I couldn't in good faith publish an 9000+ word chapter so I'll break it in to two...even though I've done it before and I'll do it again. You get one week, my pretties, before the bitter end!


	4. Chapter 4

**LITTLE 18  
****(part four)  
****By: AliLamba  
Rated: **Oh who am I kidding. You know what this is rated.**  
****Notes:** The end! The bitter end. That phrase is not really what I mean to imply. Kind of. Heck with it, we're off! Lots and lots of _doing it_ ahead. Because _I just can't help myself_ _and you have been so incredibly patient._ Happy Valentine's day…xoxo

* * *

He'd just killed someone.

No, someone had just died on his table. _Semantics_. There was an oversight – Goodwin hadn't run all the tests he could have, and the patient had died from a reaction to the anesthesia. Jack had let the nurse tell the family while he went tearing through the halls to his office, still in the scrubs he'd worn through surgery. They stunk of sweat and antiseptic and open bodies.

Jack threw himself into his chair and sunk his head into his hands. His fingers dug into his scalp near his hairline and he tried to pull on the cropped strands. These days his predominant feeling was _anger_ – anger at everything. Anger at the world for handing him such a shit hand.

There was a message waiting for him. Jack lifted the phone to his ear and dialed in the numbers to retrieve it.

"_Hey, it's…me._"

Jack sat straight up in his chair. He had to close his eyes against the onslaught of sudden images, of sudden feelings. _Why was she calling? Why now?_

"_I know this is probably going to come as a shock, but I think I owe it to you to explain…everything._" There was a long pause and then a deep, shuddering breath. "_Sawyer's out of town until tomorrow, so you should – I mean you could – come over tonight, if you…wanted._" There was another pause, and he imagined her biting her lip, and picking nervously at the counter. "_I'll be waiting._"

The line went dead, and the phone went slack in Jack's hand.

This was not what he had in mind for his evening. He tried to figure out how long he'd been at the hospital, but he lost track some time around Tuesday. Jack glanced at the clock. It was just past seven in the evening, and there was nothing stopping him from going to see her.

Nothing except for the fact that he didn't want to deal with the pain. _Just forget her_, his subconscious whispered. _You were moving on, Jack…just move on_.

Again he tried to dig his fingers through his hair, trying to find the best decision. There wasn't one.

* * *

It was close to ten by the time he pulled up in front of her house. He'd worn a jacket over his dress shirt and slacks, but he left the jacket unbuttoned. The last time he'd worn one to her house, it had ended up torn at the seams. The old jacket hadn't even been worth taking to the tailor…it had just gone straight into the garbage, filling the space between the empty bottles of vodka that had piled up in the last week.

The lights in her house were on, and he strolled slowly to the door, deep in thought. There was no good reason to be here, and he kept flexing his hands in his pockets as he changed his mind over and over.

He could easily go, and he could just as easily not have come. But he wanted to see her – _he wanted to fuck her_… Jack stopped in his tracks and closed his eyes, tilting his head ever so slightly back. That last part was true, as much as he didn't want to admit it. His heart felt like a bleeding machine, completely unrecognizable after its long, hard exercise. It was hard to say he hoped she wanted to be with him and wanted to tell him so tonight. A part of him anticipated rejection, and…a part of him hoped that she wanted to fuck him anyway.

_If she does…could I do it? Could I be with her at all if Kate wants to stay with her husband?_ It wasn't something he wanted to think about, and he wasn't sure what his decision would be should she lay that option at his feet.

Jack sighed and started moving toward the door again. He spied her through the window before he knocked; she was curled in a tight ball on the couch, her head down. He looked away while he rang the bell. The door opened less than three seconds later.

Kate was still beautiful. Her eyes were rimmed with red, her face pale. Jack sucked in a breath when he noticed she'd lost weight.

"Jack," she breathed, sounding awed. She stepped aside to let him in, and Jack walked a few feet inside.

The house was mostly unfurnished, with the odd prop-like decoration sitting on the mantle or coffee table. The walls were all beige, and Jack was reminded of the way houses were staged when someone put them up for sale. He decided not to dwell on it.

"Come," Kate whispered, closing the door. "Sit." She gestured toward the sofa before leading the way, taking the same spot she'd vacated before he rang the bell.

Jack took a seat in an armchair. Both recognized that this was the farthest away he could have chosen to sit.

Kate was staring at his feet, biting her lip, and Jack could tell she was fighting back tears. There was a long, terse moment where neither of them said anything.

"Do you love him?"

Kate sunk her teeth harder onto her lower lip, and brought her fingers up to hide her mouth. With tears welled in her eyes, she shook her head. "I thought I did," she whispered, not unkindly.

Jack nodded, not feeling at all sentimental. He was merely processing facts. As far as he was concerned, this might as well be business. "Do you love me?"

A tear snaked its way over her cheek, and Kate looked up at the ceiling. "_Fuck_, Jack, it's only been…two months? Six weeks?" She shook her head, but it seemed more a frustrated motion rather than denying his words. "We barely know each other."

"You're right," he admitted. Jack leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Then why am I here."

Kate stood abruptly. "I don't know, Jack!" she cried. "You know what, maybe you should go – maybe this was a mistake."

Jack stood as well. "Fine," he nodded, turning toward the door.

"No!" Kate wailed, and she collapsed back on the couch, sobbing.

There was an awful full minute where Jack listened to her cry, completely immobile. _This is just so fucked up_. Jack sighed, long and laboriously, as he took the seat next to her on the couch. He didn't touch her, instead leaning his forearms on his knees. On a primitive level, he understood. What would have happened if Juliet hadn't made everything easy for him? Because in a way, she had. By leaving, Juliet had made the decision for him. A part of him still felt attached to her, but it was in the sense that he still lived in their apartment, and still used the dishes they'd bought after their wedding. The memory of his wife and the life they'd had together was all over his daily living space, as detached as he was to all of it.

Kate's sobs began to ebb. He listened as they turned to hiccups, and then after a long while, calmed to deep, shaky breaths.

"I don't want to lose you, Jack."

Jack looked up at the wall opposite them, not willing to speak. His heart gave a painful squeeze.

"But I can't leave Sawyer. I don't…I don't know how."

Jack looked at her then. That intangible string he'd found the two months or the six weeks ago was still there, and just as strong as ever. He felt like she was tugging on it now. In all that time they'd spent maybe 36 whole hours in each other's presence, and it came down to this. Two confused, heartbroken people waiting for this to get easier.

"Kate, I don't know what you expect from me."

She inhaled a shuddering breath. "I don't know either," she whispered.

The confession made him relax, to a certain extent. As he stared into her eyes, looking for answers, it didn't go unnoticed by him that she licked her lower lip. And that, after a brief pause, he leaned forward, just a fraction of an inch, confused and unsure. Kate crossed the distance easily and touched her lips to his.

And suddenly, they were both lost.

Jack's eyebrows raised, afraid she would stop at any time or afraid that she wouldn't – he wasn't sure. Immediately Kate opened her mouth and deepened the kiss, sweeping their tongues together and invading him. Jack let himself get swept up in her, turning just enough to allow her closer. Then he was responding, and then he was putting his arms around her, and she was arching her back so that she was closer to him, and she was running her hands into his hair. Jack spread his hand across her lower back, pulling her toward him. He grabbed the fabric of her t-shirt. He released it to run his hand lower, over the curve of her ass. It felt so good under his hand, so _fucking good_…and so terribly, utterly wrong when the curve that turned him on was not his alone to touch. His body was responding to every move she made, and suddenly it terrified the living shit out of him. He couldn't do this.

Jack ripped himself away with a guttural sound, standing and pressing the balls of his hands to his eyes to stop the spilling images. He was remembering her naked beneath him, wanting him, begging him.

"I can't," he said simply. "I can't do this anymore." He was echoing one of her previous sentiments, and the irony was not lost on him.

"Kate I can't just have half of you…I can't share you with him."

She nodded, tearing up once again. "I never thought…" she started to say, but then stopped, unable to continue. She shook her head again as tears spilled over her cheeks.

Jack felt so exasperated. He felt so exhausted. Unceremoniously Jack folded himself in the armchair, observing her with an implacable gaze.

They stared at each other while Kate calmed her tears. She stared out of the window for a long while. Jack looked at the clock. It was almost eleven.

"I'm going to go take a shower." It sounded like she'd been trying to make the decision for some time, and Jack watched her stand and cross the room. She didn't turn to look at him, she just went. He heard the sudden spray of water from not too far away.

Jack leaned back on his chair, and tilted his head to stare at the ceiling. He didn't want to picture her naked and wet, but he did anyway.

He surely couldn't want her this badly. He couldn't want her so badly that he was willing to ruin another person's life, because surely nothing else could be possible in what they were doing to Sawyer. He was fantasizing about fucking another man's wife. The fact that he felt something so strongly emotional was momentarily immaterial. Jack dragged both hands through his hair, thoroughly frustrated. Frustrated because he knew he was going to stand and follow her to the bathroom, and frustrated because she wanted him to. He stood from the chair unwillingly.

Jack found himself staring at her, in this other man's shower. Glass walls surrounded Kate, steam billowing over the top and dissipating in the room beyond. She turned to look at him, partially twisting her body so that she could see him over her shoulder. He saw the water cascading through her hair, down her back, and over her ass. Her handsome skin was still marred by the bruise on her thigh, and there was something newer on her back, dark blue and as big as Jack's palm. He felt overcome with shame and helplessness and rage.

Kate was still looking at him, not moving. He felt so frustrated, and he already knew she would get her way.

She was watching as Jack slowly discarded his jacket, shirt, socks and shoes. He hesitated over his belt buckle. She was still staring at him, her mouth slightly open, the expression in her eyes a heady mixture of nerves and desire. He wanted her. All thoughts aside he wanted her, and she wanted him, and both were willing to give in to temptation.

Jack let go of the rest of his clothes and stepped to the glass door of the shower. He opened it and stepped inside, and with the door closed there were two feet between himself and Katherine Ford. She looked down, her eyelashes wet, and then took a perilous half-step forward. Jack let his eyes close as he felt her moving closer. Her hand touched his chest above his heart and headed up his body, until she was cradling the side of his face. Oh how he ached to give in to her touch. Had he not already? He'd given in the minute he stepped out of his car.

Her lips touched his lips – she must have been on tip toe – in the most fleeting of kisses. It was completely engrossing. He tilted his head to follow her as she pulled back, and then her body was leaning against his, and he felt every inch of her bare, flushed skin.

How many times had he dreamt of this skin? He couldn't stop to think. Kate deepened their kiss too easily, and too quickly his arms were around her, pressing her to him, squeezing every pound of flesh for validity.

She moaned into his mouth as he reached her ass again, and he flexed his hips into hers. She responded immediately, tilting her head back, moaning again. He didn't want to be gentle. Jack moved his hand to her front as he claimed Kate's lips again. His fingers reached over skin until he found the apex of her thighs, and he slid a long finger inside her. He groaned himself. She was so deliciously wet. Jack slid his finger in and out of her, rubbing the heel of his hand against her clit, eliciting another wet moan from her mouth as she amplified her assault of his mouth. She wrapped her arm around his neck and put weight on his shoulders, and Jack acknowledged she was ready for more.

Jack withdrew his hand and stilled her hips. He pushed them slightly away from himself, and Kate let go of his head as he nudged her whole body around. Kate brought her hands against the glass wall, pushing her ass back against his erection.

Jack stilled. Was this too much? Was it time to stop? His chest was heaving from the build-up, and he observed her with a hooded gaze. Scalding water was pounding against his back. For the first time he was going to have sex with Kate, not in the crazed heat of the moment, but because he wanted to. She belonged to Sawyer, but he was going to fuck her anyway. Jack dragged a hand down her spine, then grabbed her hips again on either side. His fingers flexed over her flesh. She was real in his presence.

Kate lifted her ass above his erection, moving so the length of him would slide against her most intimately. She stroked against him, once…then again, and Jack's fingers were digging into her skin, his teeth clenched with need. Need for what she was so freely giving.

He felt her fingers surround his length and guide him to the opening of her sex. He felt her hot and wet, and with eyes closed he sunk into her, grateful and unthinking. She seemed to unravel around him – shoulders slacking, back bowing, as a shuddering breath left her lips. He leaned forward, pressing her against the glass wall, and relished the way she hissed through her teeth at the coolness of the glass. He began to move, in and out of her, slowly, making sure she felt every inch of him. His hand moved to the small of her back, and he applied pressure, arching her in such a way that he could push in further. She let out a gasp, and Jack looked sharply at her face. It was sweet with pleasure, and Jack started moving faster. They were such beautiful machines, and all thought was concentrated on the heat of her.

"Jack," she whispered, her face contorted with the brink, and Jack lost it. He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her up an extra inch, slamming himself easily in and out of her, damned with her pleasure. He felt her legs shudder, her muscles tighten, and when she moaned his name on her release he heard himself echoing his response.

* * *

The water was getting cold. How long had it been?

Kate systematically began to relax her muscles. She pushed herself against the glass wall and pulled herself off of Jack, standing shakily. Her legs felt like jelly. Kate turned to see Jack and found him not looking at her. She was not surprised by this.

What was she supposed to do? The choice was on one hand obvious, and on the other, decidedly not. Leaving Sawyer, trying for a life with Jack…was that the right choice? Sometimes it felt right, but how could she possibly know for sure? This man she'd known for so little time… She'd married Sawyer in such haste, and look what that had left her with.

It was hard to disentangle how she felt about Jack from how she felt about their situation. He had so much goodness in him, and was so handsome, and the way she felt when he was looking at her…she felt so _alive_. But was that only because they were carrying on this affair? Did she feel so strongly because she was acting in spite of Sawyer, or because she had an honest connection to Jack?

She was undeniably pulled to this man. At times she ached for him. And her husband seemed to know whenever she was thinking about Jack. She was marked all over with the proof of Sawyer's knowledge. And why had she let him hurt her? She had never let a man touch her that way before…never.

…Was it because she felt like she deserved it? Kate felt the familiar prick of tears, stimulated by the frustration she felt towards herself. She bit her lip, squeezing her eyes tight.

The spray of water stopped, prompting Kate to open her eyes on a hopeful gasp. Jack was looking at her, his soulful brown eyes stripping her bare.

"Let's get dry."

Kate nodded, biting her lip again with her two front teeth. She would not cry again…she would not cry again…

Jack opened the glass door and let her out first, closing the door behind them. Kate stood anxiously on the bathmat, suddenly embarrassed by her nakedness. She shielded her chest with her arms, fists curled under her chin as her skin started to pucker because of the cold. Unwelcome shivers began at her teeth.

Jack grabbed a towel – she wouldn't mention it was Sawyer's – and wrapped it around Kate's shoulders. It hung just past her hips. Naked and seemingly immune to the cold, Jack rubbed her upper arms through the towel, and then her back. He grabbed another towel, this one just a bit smaller, and patted her hair dry. He inadvertently tipped her head back, and Kate looked up into his face. The set of his lips and the clench of his jaw belied his emotions. She wanted to kiss every inch of his face to smooth his worries, but stopped short under the realization that his fears were founded, and all because of her. Oh, what was she supposed to do? Kate released a tumbled sigh.

He looked to her lips, and his jaw unhinged. _Oh Jack_… She wanted to sigh, but instead she pulled herself out of his embrace and turned to leave the bathroom. The towel he'd used to dry her hair fell to the ground as she went, and she didn't stop to pick it up. Kate walked into her bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed she shared with her husband.

Of one thing she was certain: she didn't want to stop sleeping with Jack. Kate sighed again, for once releasing a smooth breath. She needed time and space to think. Sawyer's absence was supposed to afford her both, but instead she'd found herself reaching out to the subject of her midnight anguish.

Jack padded into the bedroom, a towel wrapped around his waist. After an indecisive moment, while Kate observed him with detachment, Jack took the seat next to her on the bed. Kate didn't turn to look at him, instead biting the inside of her lip, toying with her surfacing feelings. Her brain was such a muddled mess. What she could identify, what she hated, was that she had to actively fight the urge to be relaxed and content around him, because their relationship just wasn't that simple anymore.

Hazily she recalled the afternoon, after Jack and Sawyer had played golf together. Her and Jack had been so carefree then, and it had been such an exciting revelation to feel that liberated after so long. That afternoon had been like…like she was eighteen again, working on her neighbor's farm, sneaking beers with Tom under the dogwoods. It was just so easy to be alive then.

Jack seemed troubled by his own thoughts. He had his feet on the ground, and, leaning most of his weight on the arms propped against his thighs, he seemed to be chewing on the inside of his cheek. The carpet was on the receiving end of his pensive glare.

Kate couldn't help it. She shifted herself closer to Jack, and then leaned her tired head on his shoulder. He tensed immediately, and for a bated breath she thought he might throw her off of him. But soon enough he was relaxing, and after an anxious moment, he turned and kissed her forehead.

"Oh Kate," he breathed, kissing her chastely again, this time on top of her hair. He put his arm around her, squeezed her close, and then contented himself with rubbing his hand over her upper arm. They stayed like that for a minute, and then Kate brought her legs over Jack's lap, leaning more against him. Jack clasped her to him with a massaging hand to her ankles.

…There really wasn't anything to say. This was simply an impasse.

"Jack—" she tried, looking up at him. He shushed her immediately, and then covered her lips with his own. If she was startled, it was nothing against the sudden flood of emotions. Above all, she was shocked that he had taken such a step. Their last coupling, not ten minutes ago, he'd seemed so frustrated at himself to be swept up in their implacable passion. But now…

Jack was deepening their kiss so effortlessly, sweeping her along with him. She had been worried it might be their last time together in the shower; one final giving in. Her mind was reeling under Jack's assault of her mouth. What did this mean? What could it mean? They hadn't talked – she hadn't decided to leave Sawyer yet. Could this mean…Jack didn't care? That he didn't care that legally, she was Sawyer's? And that even if she was Sawyer's, he was going to take her anyway? They were going to have sex in Sawyer's bed. Jack wanted to have sex with her in Sawyer's bed.

Heat, deliciously molten, throbbed below her navel. _Oh…_this was hot. This hot, sexy man wanted her…and she wanted him, and damned the consequences. Kate moaned into their kiss. She slid her hand over Jack's chest, through his soft, wet smattering of chest hair, moving until she was cradling the back of his head and threading her fingers through the very short hair at his nape. She wanted to see his head between her thighs, and she wanted to feel his cock in her hands. The images shocked the hell out of her, and brought a surge of heat between her hips.

Jack was waking against her inner thigh, making Kate wonder when she'd shifted to straddle him. He had one hand curled against the inside of her knee, and one hand kneading her ass. She tilted her hips forward, wanting more, wanting his fingers inside of her. As if reading her mind, Jack reached around her hip, and the pads of his fingers were suddenly at her opening. Kate inhaled his moan as he sunk two fingers into her. _Oh, Jack…_ Had she said that out loud? She had, and a thrill ran up her spine. It made it her feel so _good_ to say things out loud. This man made her feel so utterly _wanted_. She hadn't felt so wanted in all her life.

Kate dipped her hips, following the ministrations of Jack's fingers. She took her mouth off his, kissing along his face, feeling his stubble against her cheek. She found his earlobe and took it between her teeth. Jack's thumb found her clit, and Kate released a heady moan. "_Oh Jack_," she whispered again, lifting herself on her knees and dropping her hips. Jack kept up perfectly. "_I want you_…"

Jack groaned, consenting, his fingers rubbing faster, circling within her. She felt the familiar licking, the mounting smolder and beating of her core.

Kate pulled back. She stepped off Jack's lap and he almost followed but for the forceful hand she put on his chest. Kate's towel fell to the floor. Jack's was mostly unraveled across his thighs, but as she settled her weight on her feet Kate pushed the fabric to the side. Jack's erection bounced eagerly before her, and a glance to Jack's face saw his mouth sagged open; he looked shocked and turned on as all hell. Kate folded her fingers around the base of his erection, and gingerly kissed the tip. She heard Jack gasp, and out of the corner of her eye she saw him fist the duvet. Kate opened her mouth more fully around him, her wet mouth making quick work of his length. He was warm and silky smooth against her tongue, and the invasive proof of his desire for her sent an aching throb to her sex. It was amplifying her desire for his man, and the familiar tension came on suddenly. This was the brink, suddenly real, and she moaned around the cock she had moving in her mouth. She released him, panting for more.

Jack's hands were under her arms, and she flew into the air. He scooted back over the bed and then lowered her over him, grabbing her ass when her weight was settled on her knees outside his hips. Just as she was anticipating riding him sweetly from above, he flipped them. Kate's eyebrows shot up as her back found the silky duvet. Jack didn't give her the opportunity to adjust, thrusting himself inside her in one fell swoop. Her head fell back, a loud moan on her lips, partly from surprise and partly from being _oh, so _aware. She was aware of every bit of him, and the way he started pumping in and out of her had her whole body reeling. The tension flared in her groin, the smolder whipping to a frenzy.

"_Jack—" _she moaned, again and again, until finally she was lost, a tumble of passion, her orgasm sweeping through her like wildfire. Jack didn't let up all at once, and she was privy to the way she split him. He came gloriously, full of ardor and all for her.

* * *

It might have been six in the morning. She really wasn't sure when the sun rose at this time of year, but there was a lightening grey outside her windows and she smiled in spite of the clouds.

She hadn't slept much. Jack's chest was pressed against her bare back, and he felt so warm and soothing she couldn't be bothered to move. The moment was blissful. Her body was deliciously and intimately sore, yet even now she wanted more from him. She hadn't had enough of Jack yet, and again she was reminded of herself at eighteen, first discovering the pleasure of a man. That man had been different; a friend, whose comforting presence had been as easily given up as it was easily found. Everything about Jack was harder to come by, just as everything was more difficult to give up. He was more consuming than anyone she'd met in her short life.

Parts of Jack were waking up before other parts, and Kate smiled, giddy and happy. What the rest of the day held she had no idea, but she knew how she would meet it. Wiggling gently, she turned beneath Jack's weighted arm, so she could see his sleeping face. Kate couldn't remember the last time she had seen his face so soft and relaxed; she might have never seen his forehead so smooth and his jaw so slack.

Kate snaked one arm beneath Jack's neck, and she toyed with the hair at his nape. Her free hand slid down his arm, then across his stomach. She traced further down until she found his erection, which had been so enjoyably pressed against her ass. She gave him a light, smooth stroke, and watched with pleasure as Jack woke up. Before he could open his eyes she kissed him, and his momentary resistance softened like so much butter. She leaned so he would allow her to move on top of him, her hair cascading over her shoulders as it obeyed gravity.

His mouth tasted stale and warm and hers couldn't have been better, so she released his lips and carried hers to his face, his ears, the underside of his chin. She closed her mouth around his adam's apple again and again, gratified by the way it vibrated against her lips. Kate leaned up, brave in her nakedness with him. She loved the way he sucked air through his teeth at what she hoped was the way she appeared in his eyes. Jack himself was becoming visible in the early grey of dawn, his eyes and lips shining in the weak light. Lightly Jack bucked his hips against her, giving her enough of a suggestion that she held her weight with her thighs.

Her pelvis melted as she watched him angle his cock toward her sex. She throbbed when she felt the head of him against her, and then slip inside, so thick and overwhelming. He went slack beneath her, momentarily enraptured. Her heart echoed the sentiment, and slowly she began to move. He rested his hands lightly on her upper thighs and allowed her to set the pace. This was it. This was all that she needed. She needed Jack in her bed, _with her_, just like this. She'd never felt so in control as she did when with him, and so assured of herself. She felt confident when he was loving her like this. The confidence made her all the more aroused. Jack's fingers flexed against her skin, driving Kate steadily in the direction of the edge. She sped up the rise and fall of her hips and let her eyes close. Only when she felt Jack's thumb on her clit did she realize he'd moved beneath her. His thumb was warm and wet, and he slowly moved it against her as she moved herself. It was brilliant.

Her breathing increased and not from fatigue; inhales became wet with the increase in her pleasure. Jack's thumb swirled deliciously and intimately, and she stopped thinking. Jack was having sex with her. Jack was having sex with her. She shifted her weight forward and rested her hands on either side of his chest, using a new set of muscles to move herself up and down. The motion became secondary and forgotten as her brain focused on the building and satisfying sensation they made together.

Jack's hands traveled up her sides and to her breasts. He cupped their fullness as she ebbed and flowed against his palms. His warm thumb circled her nipple, and then Kate sensed Jack move before she felt him. He tensed beneath her and then the heat of his chest was inches from hers, and his mouth captured her nipple. His tongue dragged against her breast with a light suction, and Kate let out a small shout. She was ablaze with him.

His mouth opened against her breast as his breathing began to catch up with hers, and soon quiet moans were vibrating against her damp skin. Kate threw her arms around Jack's neck and threw herself into the motion of her hips, and Jack buried his head against her neck. The pleasure in her core was pulsing at the edge, waiting for release. Jack's hands were on her ass, but now not as support. His gripped her flesh and pulled her up and down. She felt his brow against her bare shoulder, his exhales against her breast, and his ardor took her down.

"Kate, Kate, Kate, Kate," he chanted as her most intimate muscles spasmed and flexed. He was still pounding her against him, but slower now. His mantra soothed her as she faded. After the smallest of respites, Kate renewed her attention to the man she surrounded. Her goal wasn't to arouse but consume and imprint. If the morning never came she wouldn't care; this moment could last forever.

Jack began to mimic the way she held him close. He breathed deeply into her skin, only to bring her down onto the bed with his exhale. They lay tangled up in each other, not speaking, until the first beams of sunlight were eking through the windows.

They kissed, and sighed and looked toward the east.

* * *

Jack checked his watch for the twenty-ninth time. He had no idea why he was so anxious. A part of him was terrified she wouldn't show, and a part of him was terrified that she would. She was late.

His coffee cup was long past empty, but he held onto the paper container anyway. It gave him something to do with his hands, and kept him from staring outside the window.

He would be okay, he resolved, for the twenty-ninth time. He would be okay if she didn't show. Their time together had been so short, so he could easily move on with enough time – and he had the rest of his life. It was a life he had hoped to spend with her, yes, but given enough time… Jack's heart was racing as much as it had been the first time he'd checked his watch. He was a jumble of nerves. If he'd been mature enough to explore his feelings, Jack would realize that he was nervous because literally every card in the deck was in her hands. Sitting by himself at a nondescript coffee shop at sunset…Jack was powerless, and that was terrifying.

They hadn't talked much that morning. They hadn't figured out why they wanted to be together, and in what context their relationship would be realistic or okay. It kept coming back to the fact that theirs was a story not worth telling.

He remembered all too well the look in her eyes when he saw her last, and the way her eyes looked like the ocean. "_I'll be there this afternoon. All afternoon. But if you meet me…that's the end. If you meet me, you meet me for real_." He had left her that morning wanting to believe her promises. He chose to believe her promises when he was stretching the definition of afternoon and coming up with every conceivable reason she would be late by fate's design.

A bell chimed softly.

Jack's head snapped in the door's direction.

She was there.

Of course she was there. The lies he'd been telling to himself were exposed by his rush of unrelenting relief. Of course he wouldn't be okay without her, and no amount of time would make the rest of his life okay without her.

She was beautiful in the way her big toothy smile split her face. She was sunlight. Jack unknowingly stood, having found himself walking toward her. At sunset the coffee shop was all but empty, and he embraced Kate. He wrapped himself around Kate and he kissed her mouth to breath in some of her light.

They were smiling too much to kiss.

The reality that she was in his arms was catching up to the fantasy of her he'd made in his mind. There was nothing stuck between them anymore. Kate was against him, and her arms were pressed into his back as if she was similarly verifying his existence.

"Let's go," she whispered, and all he could do was nod. Her light was flooding him with a happiness he'd never known, and which he never thought he deserved.

Together they walked out to her car. There were a few boxes in the backseat, overflowing with the obviousness they'd been packed quickly. Kate took the driver's seat, and Jack sat in the passenger's. He couldn't stop staring at her, and he couldn't stop smiling. Kate put the key into the ignition but didn't turn it. She turned to Jack instead, reflecting his joy. They had no idea where they were going, but they were going together.

This was the beginning of their story.

* * *

The end.

_I am so sorry it took me so long to finish this saga. I hope it has all been worth it, and I hope you've enjoyed reading this strange story. Thank you, thank you, thank you for reading._


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